"Rifling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... throat, the villain effectually prevented his calling for help, and at once commenced rifling his pockets, when the cooper arrived on the scene. A sudden blow admonished the robber that he had more than one ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Potsdam's agents, seeking the bearer of this secret, which had caused the rifling of Miss Brooke's luggage when she fell under suspicion, thanks to her clandestine way of coming aboard; and through the same agency young Thackeray had been all but murdered when suspicion, for whatever reason, shifted ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... he hoped to reach Ruhe's this very day, as his complement of porters was then completed; while by the other, which came in the evening, I was shocked to hear that M'yonga, after returning all the loads, much reduced by rifling, had demanded as a hongo two guns, two boxed ammunition, forty brass wires, and 160 yards of American sheeting, in default of which he, Grant, must lend M'yonga ten Wanguana to build a boma on the west of his district, to enable him to fight some Wasona who were invading his ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... from which they issued they broke into small parties. The cruelties they perpetrated were beyond belief. As it was impossible for them to remain more than a few hours on the same spot the utmost despatch was necessary in rifling any towns or villages into which they could force an entrance; every one whose appearance indicated the probability of his possessing money was immediately put to the most horrid torture till he either pointed out his hoard or died under the infliction. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... But Joris pushed the rifling hand fiercely away. "To touch it would be the vilest theft," he said. "His own it is. With his ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... moment a cry of 'murder, murder!' drew the student's eyes to the street below him; and there, to afflict his heart, stood his graceless Juno, having just upset the servant of a cook's shop, in the very act of rifling her basket; the sound of the drum was yet ringing through the streets; the crowd collected to hear it had not yet withdrawn from the spot; and in this way was Juno expressing her reverence for the proclamation of the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... not to be assumed that the Chows bore all their afflictions like lambs. They had methods of their own of getting even, and were efficient tent thieves, and peculiarly expert in the art of rifling tips, although this was not proved against them until the eleventh hour. They fought back on occasions, and one morning a big Californian was found near their claims, beaten almost to death. Evidently the digger ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Who thither came, to yield her charms (As Phrygian maids are wont ere wed) Into the cold Scamander's arms, But met and welcomed mine, instead— Wondering as on my neck she fell, How river-gods could love so well! Who would have thought that he who roved Like the first bees of summer then, Rifling each sweet nor ever loved But the free hearts that loved again, Readily as the reed replies To the least breath that round it sighs— Is the same dreamer who last night Stood awed and breathless at the sight ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... cousin and lover shall save a desperate father, her paternal uncle, from bankruptcy; and the prodigious effect of Robson's appalled descent, from an upper floor, his literal headlong tumble and rattle of dismay down a steep staircase occupying the centre of the stage, on his discovery of the rifling of his chest. Long was I to have in my ears the repeated shriek of his alarm, followed by a panting babble of wonder and rage as his impetus hurled him, a prostrate scrap of despair (he was a tiny figure, yet "so held the stage" that in his company you could see nobody else) ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... thee, good woman, I saw him go down before three of their pikes. What more could I do but drive my horse over the nearest rogue who was rifling him?" ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the next year, achieved his midwinter passage of the Straits of Magellan and bore down, "like a visitation of God" as a Spaniard said, upon the weakly defended ports of the west coast. After ballasting his ship with silver from the rich Potosi mines, and rifling even the churches, he hastened onward in pursuit of a richly laden galleon nicknamed Cacafuego—a name discreetly translated Spitfire, but which, to repeat a joke that greatly amused Drake's men at ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... rebelled at this last rifling of the shrine, and he made for the door. Moira's sweet solicitude held him for an instant in check. "Oh, Tim, ye'd best stay in an' warm your knee by the good fire. I've a pile of mendin' to do, and you'll tell me all about your family in th' West and how ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... bone at the back of the skull. Dr. Stock got it out within the last hour, and handed it to the local officer, who has just sent it on to me. These bright scratches you see, were made by the doctor's instruments. These other marks were made by the rifling of the barrel—a barrel like this one." He tapped the revolver. "Same make, ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... class of post-office thieves who make a specialty of rifling the registered letters that pass through their hands in transit on journeys of greater or less length. Some of them have managed operations very shrewdly, in the evident belief that they had discovered an infallible method for doing the work and at the ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... men proceeded to search, even putting their hands in the mother's pockets, besides rifling those of the son. They of course found nothing except the powder and shot, which had still remained there, and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... and ample confession, adding no extenuating circumstances and making no excuses. He wrote slowly and laboriously, Morva meanwhile rifling ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... the thief, seeing himself identified, had struck Mr. Nathan a blow with a short iron bar curved at the ends, and known as a ship carpenter's "dog." A struggle ensued, which resulted in the murder, the assassin striking his victim on the head nine times with terrible force. Then, rifling the safe of its valuable contents, he had gone stealthily down the stairs, had unfastened the front door, which had been carefully secured at half an hour after midnight, and, laying the "dog" down ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... made out of Fort Erie, the two comrades, Black Jack and the Kid, moved cautiously in the rear of the troops as they fell down the river; their intention being to remain concealed in the vicinity of any point at which an engagement might take place, and then trust to chance for an opportunity of rifling the dead or picking up whatever spoils happened to drop in their way. While deliberating upon this creditable resolve, about noon, as they had made a detour and pushed ahead of the troops, who were going into camp, their attention was ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... mistaken, doctor, Why he does ask one but for cups and horses, A rifling fly, none of your ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... boats to learn what had happened. These carried off the few who remained unhurt, but there was no means of taking off the wounded. These, however, were treated kindly and sent on shore when the ship was picked up at daylight by the English, who, on rifling her, found to their delight that there were still many powder barrels on board ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... at Osages. Among them Lola and Randolph in night clothes, were already lined up against the wall, with their hands above their heads. While one brute stood at the end of the passage pointing his gun at them, one of the others was rifling their room, others had kicked down the girls' door and one was at the end by Octavia's. None of the other people, miners of sorts, except one man's wife, had come in yet, as it was not more than half past ten o'clock! She was soon pulled out, too, and ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... as a childe I dayly winne with words, So that for proofe, he barely beares the name: I execute, and he sustaines the blame. The Mother Queene workes wonders for my sake, And in my love entombes the hope of Fraunce: Rifling the bowels of her treasurie, To supply my wants and necessitie. Paris hath full five hundred Colledges, As Monestaries, Priories, Abbyes and halles, Wherein are thirtie thousand able men, Besides a thousand sturdy student Catholicks, ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe
... and his waistcoat. "A pocket inside the waistcoat! Very useful, very useful—and more papers, yes! Take a drop, my friend, it will do you good." Thus alternately ministering to Paul's bodily comfort and rifling his person of what valuables he carried, Dieppe offered to the philosophic mind a singular resemblance to a Finance Minister who takes a farthing off the duty on beer and puts a penny on the ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... to one the seam, which, however neatly it is drawn, must leave a slight ridge, will cross the direction of the grooving, and give the ball a counter movement; either destroying altogether the rotatory motion communicated by the rifling, or causing it to take a direction quite out of the true line; accordingly as the counteraction is conveyed near the breech, or near the muzzle ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... ash-trees in deeper green, the Old Manse in profounder mystery. Gorgeous autumn came to visit the story-teller in his little western study, and, departing, wept rainbows among his trees. Winter impatiently swept down the hill opposite, rifling the trees of each last clinging bit of summer, as if thrusting aside opposing barriers and determined to search the mystery. But his white robes floated around the Old Manse, ghostly as the decaying surplice of the old pastor's portrait, and in the snowy seclusion of winter the ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... where the dashboard, had there been one, would have been placed, "this is the next thing: when you're through shooting, clean the gun. If you leave it over night, the powder dirt will make a fine rust that you may never be able to get out; and rust will eat into the rifling and make the gun inaccurate. No matter how late it is, or how tired you are, always clean your gun before you go to bed. It's the second most important thing I can teach you. You'll see lots of men who can kill game, perhaps, but remember this; the fellow who lets ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... low, ran to a native hut directly behind. Once inside this she turned and glanced back. There was no one in sight. She had not been seen. And now from Malbihn's tent she heard a great cursing. The Swede had discovered the rifling of his box. He was shouting to his men, and as she heard them reply Meriem darted from the hut and ran toward the edge of the boma furthest from Malbihn's tent. Overhanging the boma at this point was a tree ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... at him without flinching. Aha! That's your story, is it? . . . And he shakes the table a little in his passion as he speaks. . . Now listen to mine. What's this conspiracy? Who's going to prove it? You were there to rob. You were rifling his cabin; he came upon you unawares with your hands in the drawer; and you shot him with his own revolver. You killed to steal—to steal! His brother and the clerks in the office know that he took sixty pounds with him to sea. Sixty pounds in gold in a canvas bag. He told me where they were. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... agitated. It was as though she, some strange woman, were striving to subject his mind to the spell of her own will; as though across the room she were seeking not only to read his thought but to mold it to the shape of her own thought. He had the uncanny sensation that her mind was rifling his, that it would be hard to hide from those probing mental fingers any slightest desire or intention. Kendric shook himself savagely, angered that even for an instant he should have submitted to such sickish fancies. But even so, and while he strode to the ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... stairs, through a doorway, and I am in a shop where huge machines grow small in perspective. And here I see the rough forging pass through the many stages of trimming, milling, turning, boring, rifling until comes the assembling, and I take up the finished rifle ready for its final process—testing. So downstairs we go to the testing sheds, wherefrom as we approach comes the sound of dire battle, continuous reports, now in volleys, ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... sacrificed to rapidity of fire. This will be explained later. Only in our day has the general use of rifling and of elongated projectiles brought accuracy to the highest point. In our times, also, the use of fulminate has assured fire under ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... the suspicious type of mind that it suffers from its own activity. From the moment he detected Mr. Peters in the act of rifling the museum and marked down Ashe as an accomplice, Baxter's repose was doomed. Nor poppy nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy sirups of the world, could ever medicine him to that sweet sleep which ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... thing that hapned of more fatal consequences was this:—it being that time of the year when young lads are busie in rifling jackdaws nests to get their young, a scholar of the free-school, a son to a parliament officer, was got upon the top of the minster about this employment; who going along the cieling in the body of the church, and treading unwarily on some rotten boards, fell down ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... was lying in the cellar, beside our other victim. Very little blood flowed from the wound; he bled internally. He had on a very fine shirt; and after rifling his person, and possessing myself of his pocketbook, I took off his shirt, and put on the one I had bought of ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... and some jewels, as might be supposed, my fortune and former circumstances considered; and my husband, who had never stayed to be distressed, had not been put to the necessity of rifling me, as husbands usually do in such cases. But as I had seen an end of all the ready money during the long time I had lived in a state of expectation for my husband, so I began to make away one thing after another, till those few things ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... her valise to show who she really was, or why she was in Haskell, and consequently, if any vague suspicion had been aroused as to her presence in that community, the searchers had discovered no proof by this rifling of her bag. ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... children down there with their mother To run wild in the summer—a little wild. Sometimes he joins them for a day or two And sees old friends he somehow can't get near. They meet him in the general store at night, Pre-occupied with formidable mail, Rifling a printed letter as he talks. They seem afraid. He wouldn't have it so: Though a great scholar, he's a democrat, If not at heart, at least on principle. Lately when coming up to Lancaster His train being late he missed another train And had four hours to wait at Woodsville Junction After ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... spring. But it is the lesson the spring teaches, the lesson of fulfilling your nature, of waking from your slumbers, of finding the air, of giving yourself to the rifling fingers of the sun, of yielding all your scent to others, and of taking all their scent to you. That's the lesson of your strength, Julian, and of all the strength of the spring. Lie out in the showers, and let the clouds cover you with shadows, and listen to the song of every bird, and—and—ah!" ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... needle-gun by Prussia stimulated France to invent the Chassepot, and now it appears that Russia claims to have a new rifle which surpasses them both. If we may judge from Prussia's actions in this war, this improvement in rifles leads to improvement in rifling; and though it is difficult to imagine how Russia could surpass Prussia's proficiency in this art, which in civil parlance would be called robbing, yet there is no knowing to what further point of perfection it may be carried. It is only ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... be short, Ascyltos came in and briefly told us what he had done for our sakes: On this we got up; and as we were rigging our selves, it came into my head to kill the guard, and rifle the village; I told Ascyltos my mind. He liked the rifling well enough, but gave us a wish'd delivery without blood, for being acquainted with every corner of the house, he pick'd the lock of an inner-room where the movables lay, and bringing us into it, we lifted what was of most value, ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... chance restored their fallen fortunes. Forming in close order, they received the Vitellians' reckless and disordered charge, and at once flung them into confusion. Antonius pressed hard on the fugitives and cut down all who blocked his path. The others followed each his inclination, rifling the dead, capturing prisoners, seizing arms and horses. Meanwhile, summoned by their shouts of triumph, those who had just now been in full flight across the fields came hurrying back ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Love,—a cruel bee once stung him, as he was rifling honey from the hives, and pricked his finger-tips all; then he was in pain, and blew upon his hand, and leaped, and stamped the ground. And then he showed his hurt to Aphrodite, and made much complaint, how that the bee is a tiny ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... personage of high rank at Cologne. It excites considerable attention among virtuosos.——The English, undeterred by the indignation which has been poured out upon Lord Elgin by BYRON and others for rifling Athens of its antiquities for display at home, are practicing the same desecration in regard to the treasures discovered in Nineveh by Mr. Layard. It is announced that the Great Bull and upwards of 100 ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... right; the three men, one of whom was habited like a priest, were rifling the dead. He saw them come up to a prostrate form which struggled on being touched. One of the three men instantly drew a knife and stabbed the wounded man. When they had searched the body and taken from it what they required they came towards ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... off to command in India.[284] Would it had been the Chief Governorship! But to have remained at home would have been bare livelihood, and that is all. I asked him what he thought of "strangling a nabob, and rifling his jewel closet," and he answered, "No, no, an honest man." I fear we must add, a poor one. Lady Dalhousie, formerly Miss Brown of Coalstoun, is an amiable, intelligent, and lively woman, who does not permit society to "cream and mantle like a ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... gun; beyond again there are workmen and inspectors testing and gauging another similar giant. Look down this shining tube and watch the gauging, now with callipers, now with a rubber device which takes the impression of the rifling and reveals any defect. The gauging turns upon the ten-thousandth part of an inch, and any mistake or flaw may mean ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The guns made good practice, however, one section of the 38th battery being in action all day within 800 yards of the Boer line, and putting themselves out of action after 300 rounds by the destruction of their own rifling. Once over the curve every yard of the veld was commanded by the hidden riflemen. The infantry advanced, but could make no headway against the deadly fire which met them. By short rushes the attack managed to get within 300 yards of the enemy, and there it stuck. On the right the Munsters ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shadow. Audrey descended the two or three steps leading into the pit, and Haward followed her. Side by side they left the playhouse, and found themselves in the garden, and also in the presence of five or six ladies and gentlemen, seated upon the grass beneath a mulberry-tree, or engaged in rifling the grape arbor ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... this human ortolan with greater desire than when he viewed her last; nor was his desire at all lessened by the aversion which he discovered in her to himself. On the contrary, this served rather to heighten the pleasure he proposed in rifling her charms, as it added triumph to lust; nay, he had some further views, from obtaining the absolute possession of her person, which we detest too much even to mention; and revenge itself was not without its share in the gratifications ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the cut on my elbow, and recalled the long hours of work at the properties, the damaged scene, the rifling of the green-room, and Philip's desertion with the Dragon, his probable industry for Mr. Clinton's theatricals, and the way he had left us to face our own disappointed audience, fierce indignation got the upper ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... of his betters? I had more hope of the lad, for he hath a good heart and a quick engine; and I trusted that ere now he had drawn the lease of my Wilmecote farm to Master Tilney here. But deer-stealing!—like a lord's son, or a knight's at the least. Could not the rifling of a rabbit-warren serve his turn? Deer-stealing! I fear me he will come ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... somewhere. In what way she expected Flora de Barral to set about saving herself from a most miserable existence I can't conceive; but I verily believe that she would have found it easier to forgive the girl an actual crime; say the rifling of the Bournemouth old lady's desk, for instance. And then—for Mrs Fyne was very much of a woman herself—her sense of proprietorship was very strong within her; and though she had not much use for her brother, yet she did not like to see ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... standing on the wheels, drawing out boxes and barrels and throwing them down into the road, where the ants swarmed to the attack. Not the Tigers alone, but a number of Ashby's men as well engaged in the general business. The latter, either not so hungry or more valiant to abstain from the smaller rifling, turned to the plunder of horses. There were horses enough, dead and wounded, along that frightful road. Others were unhurt, still harnessed to wagons, or corralled in fence corners, or huddled with prisoners in the trodden fields. Horses, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... was, for instance, the cartridge charged with shot of various sizes— from dust-shot for the killing of humming-birds and such like, up to ordinary buck-shot—enclosed in a case so fragile that the friction of its passage along the rifling of the barrel destroyed it, causing it to crumble to dust as it emerged from the muzzle of the weapon, and leave the charge of shot free to do its work in the same manner as though fired from an ordinary shot-gun. Then there was the cartridge ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... but always in a crowd; who, not satisfied with gazing at us, frequently desired us to uncover part of our skin; the sight of which commonly produced a general murmur of admiration. At the same time they did not omit these opportunities of rifling our pockets; and, at last, one of them snatched a small bayonet from Mr Gore, which hung in its sheath by his side. This was represented to the chief, who pretended to send some person in search of it. But, in all probability, he countenanced the theft; for, soon after, Omai had a dagger ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... recently come from the East, going to Dawson. La Belle and Fournier got passage with these men on a small boat, travelled with them, camped, ate, and slept with them till one night in camp on an island near Stewart River they murdered their three hosts, probably in sleep, and after rifling their pockets, and to hide their crime, they tied the bodies up, weighted with stones, and threw them in the river. Then they burned up all evidences of their crime, got in the boat and went to Dawson, from which place they proceeded farther, ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... cemetery of dead divinities, and then once more to the urn at his feet. "'Vanity of vanities—all is vanity!' Gods and men may come and go, but Death 'goes on for ever.'" The scene changes, and he feigns to be present at the rifling of a barrow, the "tomb of the Athenian heroes" on the plain of Marathon, or one of the lonely tumuli on Sigeum and Rhoeteum, "the great and goodly tombs" of Achilles and Patroclus ("they twain in one golden urn"); of Antilochus, and of Telamonian ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... murderer sitting on the jury that tried him. There have been cases in which an innkeeper has been charged by one of his servants with the murder of a traveller, the servant deposing to having seen his master on the stranger's bed, strangling him, and afterwards rifling his pockets—another servant deposing that she saw him come down at that time at a very early hour in the morning, steal into the garden, take gold from his pocket, and carefully wrapping it up bury it in a designated spot—on the search of which the ground is found loose and freshly dug, and ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... as to threats uttered by Peace against the Dysons in the July of 1876, and as to his arrest at Blackheath in the October of 1878. The revolver taken from Peace that night was produced, and it was shown that the rifling of the bullet extracted from Dyson's head was the same as that of the bullet fired from the revolver carried by Peace at ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... back of the skull. Dr Stock got it out within the last hour, and handed it to the local officer, who has just sent it on to me. These bright scratches you see were made by the doctor's instruments. These other marks were made by the rifling of the barrel a barrel like this one.' He tapped the revolver. 'Same make, same calibre. There is no other that marks ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... from making their own dicker with the King of the Belgians or with the Congo government, and rifling the hoard on a fifty-fifty or some ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... this time they are rifling the ivory cache. That fool Wiseman shall pay dearly for this. Bring him ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... may become under French domination; but between what the Spaniards may do (and, in all likelihood, will do) for themselves, and what Frenchmen would do for them. But,—waiving this,—the sweeping away of the most splendid monuments of art, and rifling of the public treasuries in the conquered countries, are an apt prologue to the tragedy which is to ensue. Strange that there are men who can be so besotted as to see, in the decrees of the Usurper concerning feudal tenures and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... shawl more closely around her and hastened them to the business in hand. On the table was a sheet of paper. On the paper, rifling on three supports, was a small triangular board. Two of the supports were easily moving casters. The third support, placed at the apex of the triangle, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... the persons who formerly trumpeted forth the most loudly the violent resolutions of assemblies, the universal insurrections, the seizing and burning the stamped papers, the forcing stamp officers to resign their commissions under the gallows, the rifling and pulling down of the houses of magistrates, and the expulsion from their country of all who dared to write or speak a single word in defence of the powers of Parliament,—these very trumpeters are now the men that represent the whole as a mere trifle, and choose ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... supposed that the vetturino had contemplated rifling the carriage in the inn yard; but some suspicion as to the servant's not leaving the luggage, and the sort of dog fidelity displayed by Thompson towards the brothers; had induced him rather to sanction an attempt on George during ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... friends,—nothing but debtors. His sons and his associates are gone away long ago with the army. They traffic in the rear among the wagons, vending the water of life, buying watches, and, on nights of battle, emptying the pockets of the dead, or rifling the baggage tumbled in the ditches ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... from 900 to 1,000 deg.F. in an automatic furnace 25 ft. long, this operation taking about 2 hr. The purpose of hot straightening was to prevent any stresses being put into the blanks, so that after rough-turning, drilling or rifling operations they would not have a tendency to spring back to shape as left by the ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... velocity of 2,000 feet per second to a bullet, requires a pressure of at least 15 English tons in the chamber of a gun. This would be a dangerous pressure in an old-fashioned shoulder arm; while a bullet made only of lead would strip on striking the rifling and pass right through the barrel of the gun without taking any rotary motion whatever. It might at first seem that the powder is the only thing to be considered; but high ballistics can only be obtained when everything else is adapted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... son," replied the captain. "I presume their only object was plunder, and that if they had succeeded in rifling the safe without discovery, they would have gone ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... Khorsabad are figured in BOTTA, Monument, &c. plate 165. There is one necropolis in Assyria that, in the employment of terra-cotta coffins, resembles the graveyards of Chaldaea; it is that of Kaleh-Shergat, which has long been under process of rifling by the Arabs, who find cylinders, engraved stones, and jewels among its graves. PLACE judges from the appearance of the coffins and other objects found that this necropolis dates from the Parthian times (Ninive, vol. ii. pp. 183-185). LAYARD ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... place to myself once, and a cheerful time I had of it. The game was plenty as heart could wish; and there was none to meddle with the ground unless there might have been a hunting party of the Delawares crossing the hills, or, maybe, a rifling scout of them thieves, the Iroquois. There was one or two Frenchmen that squatted in the flats further west, and married squaws; and some of the Scotch- Irishers, from the Cherry Valley, would come on to the lake, and borrow my canoe to take a mess of parch, or drop a line for salmon- ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... at Norfolk, and he conceived the idea of turning some of this ordnance into rifles. In order to enable them to stand the additional bursting strain we forged wrought-iron bands and shrank them over the chambers, and we devised a special tool for rifling the bore of the guns. They gave ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... been rifling the trunks again. He walked down to the beach with an armful of fans, piled them there, returned to camp. The girls descended, eyed them, ascended, gathered together, ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... percussion caps which "were sent by express without any disguise to Montgomery," making contracts for artillery, powder and other munitions of war, as well as for a complete set of machinery for rifling cannon, and had searched the harbor of New York in the hope of finding a steamer or two that might be armed and used for coast defense. None of these people were molested, and that was one thing that led the Southerners to believe that the ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... evidently a gyroscopic effect, being reversed in direction by a change from a right to a left-handed twist of rifling, and being increased by an increase of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... killed. The Kaffir swore he himself had been employed to bury them, and that the thing he said was true. If so, our "Lady Anne" has made the great shot of the war. The authorities are inclined to believe the story. The new gun on Gun Hill is perhaps too vigorous for our old friend, and the rifling on his shells is too clean. Whatever the truth may be, he gave us a lively time morning and afternoon. I think he was trying to destroy the Star bakery, about one hundred yards below my cottage. The shells ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... space to enter upon a disquisition concerning these progressive changes; but suffice it to say that nearly all the peculiar styles of fire-arms were well known at an early period, and that the rifling, etc., of guns and cannon, with the other modifications now adopted, are merely the development and consummation of old ideas. For instance, the rifled arquebuse was known and used at the close of the fifteenth century, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... collected about a number of bodies at Cambria which had been washed up and began rifling the trunks. After they had secured all the contents they turned their attention ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... much like an oil well derrick. Inside it are two steel rails to fill grooves in the rocket. These guide the rocket much as rifling in a gun barrel guides a bullet. Prof. Goddard, when teaching at Princeton in 1912, evolved the idea of shooting a rocket to the moon by means of successive charges of explosive much as the new German rocket motor racers are powered. In this most recent experiment he used ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... impudence," shouted the Colonel, as he pointed to one of the luggage labels. "That's who I am. It's good enough to get you discharged before you're a much older man. And now I call upon you to do your duty. I have caught this man under suspicious circumstances in the very act of rifling my effects. I insist upon his being taken ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... clerk according to Willis' knowledge running from Tallahassee to Jacksonville, was Benjamin F. Cox. The first colored mail clerk in the Jacksonville Post Office was Camp Hughes. He was sent to prison for rifling the mail. Willis Myers succeeded Hughes and Willis Williams succeeded Myers. Willis received a telegram to come to Jacksonville to take Myers' place and when he came expected to stay three or four days, but, after getting here was retained permanently and remained ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... trained, and developed the dog, the latter was incapable of rising, and was one of man's most dangerous foes,—the fox robbing his hen-roosts and grape-vines, the wolf eating him and his children, and the jackal and hyena picking his bones and rifling his grave. The same ridiculous claim of being the corner-stone of human society has been made by some wiseacre in behalf of the goat. The plain truth is that only one animal can justly lay claim to such a distinction. At the threshold of human society and civilization lies ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... battle, and the charge, and the tumultuous excitement of the conflict, but of the field after the battle—Russians, in their frenzy or their terror, shooting Englishmen who would have offered them water to quench their agony of thirst; Englishmen, in crowds, rifling the pockets of the men they had slain or wounded, taking their few shillings or roubles, and discovering among the plunder of the stiffening corpses images of the 'Virgin and the Child.' You have read this, and your imagination has followed the fearful details. This ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... less soothing than solemn! Was not the solitude enhanced by a glimpse she caught of a restless fawn, glancing in the distance across the avenue, as he silently changed the tree under which he slept?—Then the gentle breeze would enter her window, laden with sweet scents of which he had just been rifling the coy flowers beneath, in their dewy repose, tended and petted during the day by her own delicate hand!—Beautiful moon!—cold and chaste in thy skyey palace, studded with brilliant and innumerable gems, and shedding down thy rich and tender radiance upon ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... in length. The muzzle is rounded to protect the rifling. Any injury here would allow gases to escape around the sides of the bullet and destroy ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... No, it hasn't been sold yet. Do you wish me to ship it to you?... On approval; certainly.... Of course it's an original flintlock; I didn't list it as re-altered, did I?... No, not at all; the only replacement is the small spring inside the patchbox.... Yes, the rifling is excellent.... Of course; I'll ship it at once.... Good-by, ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... advances. After it has passed through, another auger, a trifle larger, is substituted in its place, and thus the calibre of the barrel is gradually enlarged to nearly the required size. Formerly, six borings were given to each barrel, but at the present time only four are permitted, aside from the rifling, which is a distinct operation, performed at the works on the till, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... addressing a mob of foreigners wet with the blood of their victims, called them "my friends." Nast presented another cartoon which disturbed the Democracy. It represented John T. Hoffman standing before a screen behind which a gang of thieves was busily rifling the city treasury. The face of Hoffman only was depicted, but the picture's serious note of warning passed for more than a bit of campaign pleasantry. Frank P. Blair, the Democratic candidate for Vice-President, also furnished a text for bitter ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... yearly rent than the rolls of many a Spanish grandee could boast, he wisely chose the part of discretion and surrendered at the same. His new acquaintances showed themselves expert practitioners in the breaking open of trunks and the rifling of treasure-boxes. All his beloved doubloons, all his cherished dollars, for the which no Yankee ever felt a stronger passion, took swift wings and flew from his coffers to alight in the hands of the adversary. The sacred recesses of his pockets, and those of his companions, were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... nothing but waves and rocks, and the still more hostile Romans, whose arrogance we cannot escape by obsequiousness and submission. These plunderers of the world, after exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... hard on Master Woodley. I am only glad they are not melted. But how is it with all my old friends, Harry? Poor Sir George writ me that old clerk North died of grief of the rifling of the church; and that John Kenton had been killed by some stragglers. What ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and, after a couple of minutes' suspense, a loud report showed that our object had been accomplished. Captain Fowke hastened to examine the debris, and found that the 6-inch gun had two gaping holes in its muzzle, which was badly bulged, and that the breech and rifling had been destroyed beyond all chance of repair. The howitzer was in an even worse plight, the explosion having wrecked the carriage ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... reply. "We were both on board together, and standing at the crack of the door watched you sitting at dinner that evening. Elma told me that she believed that there was a plot against your life, but why she would not tell me. She evidently knew of the proposed rifling of the safe at the Consulate. Oberg himself was also on board, locked in his own cabin. Elma must have overheard some conversation between the Baron and one of the others, for she was in great fear the whole time lest they might injure you. Yet it seemed, after all, as though their idea was the ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... terribly strong, lashing trees down with his tail, and wearing a deep path through the wood and over the stones with his huge and perpetual bulk; but the hero, covered with hide-wrapped shield against the poison, gets down into the hollow path, and pierces the monster from below, afterward rifling its underground store and carrying off ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... a smile, as the panting little steam-tug, so useful to that unwieldy ship, the Casby, waited on and watched him as if it were seeking an opportunity of running in and rifling him of all he wanted before he could resist its manoeuvres; though there was that in Mr Pancks's eagerness, too, which awakened many wondering speculations in his mind. After a little consideration, he resolved to supply Mr Pancks with such leading information as it was in his power to impart ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... other Commissioners, down into that Countrey, to make seisure of all his moveable goods that they could finde there, who being come unto Rochester, according to their Commission, entred his house; and the first thing they did was, they turned out all his Servants; then they fell to rifling his goods, whereof the chief part of them were taken for the Kings use, the rest they took for themselves; then they came into his Library, which they found so replenished, and with such kind of Books, as it was thought the like was not to be ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... so well as when he uttered it. But I learned in time that this benignity, this cordiality, this music, belonged in no shape to me: it was a part of himself; it was the honey of his temper; it was the balm of his mellow mood; he imparted it, as the ripe fruit rewards with sweetness the rifling bee; he diffused it about him, as sweet plants shed their perfume. Does the nectarine love either the bee or bird it feeds? Is the sweetbriar ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the brow of the hill. Before him extended a long hollow defile, commanded on one side by rugged, precipitous heights, covered with bushes and scanty forest trees. At some distance he beheld the carriage of the Venitians overturned; a numerous gang of desperadoes were rifling it; the young man and his servant were overpowered and partly stripped, and the lady was in the hands of two ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... for consent, he clasped her in his arms, and kissed her lips again and again, with the ardor of the honey-bee rifling the flowers of their sweets, till she ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... whom she has no secrets. Were it not that such a woman is likely to have set up the closest relations with other miscreants in these past years, I should say that her agent and accomplice was Ledantec. Ledantec is still alive; I know that, for I saw him myself on the field of the Alma, rifling the dead. ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... farther off-course. If worst came to worst, they could roll Valier over and use the six o'clock auxiliary; there was a small arc through which the motors could turn on their mounts. But the trouble was unknown, and they might end up rifling or pinwheeling if they didn't let ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... hauling the prahu into a creek. A round of grape quickly decided the matter; the natives fled, and the prahu was quietly taken possession of by our crew. Having effected our object, we proceeded along the coast with our two prizes in tow. At sunset, after rifling the boats of arms, flags, and gongs, we set them on fire, and made sail to the southward; the gig, which had rejoined us, being in company. About midnight we anchored in a small and lonely bay,—I should say, twenty miles from where the above occurrences took place. We took our meals, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... was a carrying off of relics, a rifling of tombs, and a temporary disturbance of the Confessor's bones. But the royal tombs saved the Abbey from destruction, although Protector Somerset was on the point of pulling it down to build his new palace ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the pickpocket was by this time so vivid to her mind, that she began making a pen-and-ink sketch of him, as a dark-browed villain in the act of rifling the pocket of a very haughty young woman proceeding along the street with an air of extreme self-consciousness. The drawing was on a very small scale, and when it was finished to her satisfaction there was still half the page unoccupied. Madge hastily wrote under the sketch the words: "The ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... inn soon after Lancy Doane, and James Faddo went then too, riding hard for Theddlethorpe, for he knew that in less than an hour the coast-guards would be rifling the hiding places of his smuggled stuff. You did not take a horse, but, getting a musket, you walked the sands ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you in your murderous scheme," the Superintendent thundered. "You were found in the War Office by the night watchman, rifling a safe of valuable documents. You shot him with a pistol equipped with a silencer. You shot down two more who, hearing his cries, rushed to his aid. And you attempted to stroll out of the building, apparently under ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... satchel, bag, and basket, to enjoy the fresh air and bright sunshine, and to leap, and jump, and rejoice in all the wild vagaries of youth among the fresh uplands and hills, scrambling over all obstruction—the elder climbing the old trees, and rifling them of their spoil—the younger and less adventurous hooking down the branches, and claiming the right of all they can collect 'by hook or by crook.' But wo to the poor mothers who have to mend the garments in which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... it had been a cannon-ball; and though she sat with her book in her lap by the fire in Mary's room, all the dear old furniture and pictures round her, her head was weaving an unheard-of imagination, about robbers coming in rifling everything—coming up the stairs—creak, creak, was that their step?—she held her breath, and her eyes dilated—seizing her for the sake of her watch! What article there would be in the paper—"Melancholy disappearance of the youthful Countess of Caergwent." Then Aunt Barbara ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to remove metal fouling. After scrubbing out the bore with the soda solution, plug it from the breech with a cork at the front end of the chamber or where the rifling begins. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... In the rifling of this Catelaynia, our Turkes fell at variance one with another, and in such a manner, that we divided our selves, the lesser ship returned to Algier, and our Exchange tooke the opportunitie of the wind, and plyed out of the Streights, which reioyced Iohn ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... of the mad antics of the royal jester, and La Rochefoucauld, addressing himself to the person whom he supposed to be his Majesty in disguise, begged him to treat him with humanity. His deception was not long continued; for the maskers, after rifling his trunks, drew him from his place of concealment and murdered him. His lifeless body was dragged through ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... the cases were very deep, and they had hitherto in general, in order to save time, proved their contents with an iron rod. Now Morley with a desperate air mounting on some steps that were in the room, commenced formally rifling the cases and throwing their contents on the floor; it was soon strewn with deeds and papers and boxes which he and Devilsdust the moment they had glanced at them hurled away. At length when all hope seemed to have vanished, clearing a case which at first appeared only to contain papers, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... did I go where roses grew, And meadow larks which skyward flew From grasses sparkling in the dew, The yellow sunshine pouring through? What was there for me to find? Were they to learn my froward mind? From far across vast summer seas, Rifling green marshes, bending trees, Driving cloud-shadows down the air, Keen breezes smote me here and there, Keen breezes crying, Why, why, why? And nothing had I to reply! Beings with neither soul nor sense, Convicting me with their pretence; Beings ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... called Cyneward to me, and we went through the house from end to end. Everywhere had been the pirates, rifling and spoiling in haste, so that the hangings were falling from the walls, and rich stuffs torn from chests and closets strewed the floors of Osritha's bower. But we found ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... hand at rifling wolf dens. Occasionally a pup would dart from another exit, and the shotgun was an effective weapon with which to check his flight. But never had he seen such a mad outpouring of pups as this, and in all his long life in the hills a she-wolf had never rushed him, even in ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... we. That adventure down the slip, ignominious though it was, had put fire into my heart. I entered eagerly into the captain's scheme of hauling and rifling the Millport lobster-traps, in the convenient fog which, as if sent by heaven, hid us for a little space from the land. The blood of ancestral pirates and robbers bounded hilariously once more in ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... me in a late journey to ——. It seems I was the son of an honest farmer in that quarter, who married a tidy girl of a milkmaid that lived with him. My father had detected me in making some atrocious advances to my mother-in-law, and had turned me out of doors. I did not go off, however, without rifling his drawer of some hundreds of dollars, which he had laid up against a rainy day. I was noted for such pranks, and was hated by all the neighbours for my pride and laziness. It was easy, by comparison of circumstances, for Ellis to ascertain that Hadwin's ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... pictured the shut shops, and shops and yet again shops, filled with elegance and costliness—robes, hats, stockings, shoes, gloves, incredibly fine lingerie, furs, jewels, perfumes—designed and confected for the setting-off of just such young attractiveness as hers. She pictured herself rifling those deserted and silent shops by some magic means and emerging safe, undetected, in batiste so rare that her skin blushed through it, in a frock that was priceless and yet nothing at all, and in warm marvellous sables that no blast of wind or misfortune ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... was nailed to Lambeth Palace; and in 1572, not without the tacit approval of the Government, and backed by the rising national hostility to Spain, Drake set out for the Indies, where he operated for two years, planning attacks on Cartagena and Nombre de Dios, or rifling the treasure trains as they came overland from Panama. Henceforth the watchfulness of Spain was redoubled in the West Indies; but the Pacific, which Drake had seen from the Peak of Darien, was still regarded as a safe inland lake. ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... weapon, more frightful than the unsheathed claws of the royalest Bengal tiger, hanging over the head of his chosen among women, stung Dick Bellamy to very unceremonious removal of the body, which, after rifling it of a handful of cartridges, he flung by the roadside; and then, lest Amaryllis should see the awful head again, even in death, he covered the whole corpse with an overcoat of Melchard's ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... truth, she had no remorse. She had simply defended herself! The inquiry begun by the police had ended in no definite result. At Maisons-Lafitte, people thought that the Russian house had been attacked by some thieves who had been in the habit of entering unoccupied houses and rifling them of their contents. They had even arrested an old vagabond, and accused him of the attempted robbery at General Vogotzine's; but the old man had answered: "I do not even know the house." But was not this Menko a hundred times more culpable than a thief? It was more and worse ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was in Rash's room, surrounded by the objects most intimate to his person. Here the poor boy slept and dressed, and lived the portion of his life which no one else could share with him. In a sense they were rifling his privacy, the secrecy with which every human being has in some measure to surround himself. She recalled a day in her childhood, after her parents and both her brothers had died, when their house with its contents was put up for sale. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... she said, "There is no child," and sighed. Into his dead And wasted heart there leaped a flame and caught His hollow eyes. "Rememberest thou naught, Nothing regrettest, nothing holdst in grief Of all our joy together ere that thief Came rifling in?" For all her answer she Lookt long upon him, long and earnestly; And misty grew her eyes, and slowly filled. Slowly the great tears brimmed, and slowly rilled Adown her cheeks. So presently she hid Those wells of grief, ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... the calibre of the bullet in our own army has been reduced from that of the Martini-Henry (.450 in.) to one of .309 in. in the Lee-Metford, and a consequent reduction in weight from 480 to 215 grains. To allow of the satisfactory assumption of the more complicated rifling by the more rapidly projected bullet, the lead core has been ensheathed in a mantle of denser metal. The bullet itself is of an original calibre (.309 in.) somewhat exceeding the bore of the rifle ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... he! Gone out to do something desperate, as Tryst did!' If it were, he would come up-stairs and pass her door, going to his room. She opened it an inch, holding her breath. At first, nothing! Was it fancy? Or was some one noiselessly rifling the room down-stairs? But surely no one would steal of Uncle Tod, who, everybody knew, had nothing valuable. Then came a sound as of bootless feet pressing the stairs stealthily! And the thought darted through ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... beautiful bright bay skin, which I do not know, which they say is bush cow—but they call half a dozen things bush cow. These guns are not the "gas-pipes" I have seen up north; but decent rifles which have had the rifling filed out and the locks replaced by flint locks and converted into muzzle loaders, and many of them have beautiful barrels. I find the Ajumba name for the beautiful shrub that has long bunches of red, yellow and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... pendulum of considerable weight, which was displaced from its position of rest by the impact of the bullet, the velocity of which was required. A modification of the ballistic pendulum was also employed by W.E. Metford (1824-1899) in his researches on different forms of rifling; the bob was made in the form of a long cylinder, weighing about 140 lb, suspended with its axis horizontal from four wires at each end, all moving points being provided with knife edges. The true length of suspension was deduced from observations of the time of a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... here, also returned home yesterday, and had much to say of the treatment of those caught in the act of rifling the dead of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Lowther firing his guns, hoisted the piratical Colours, which Captain Edward bravely returned; but at length finding the Pirate too strong for him he yielded, and the Pirate came on Board, and not only rifling the ship, but beat and cut the men in a cruel manner. In crusing about the Bay, they took several other vessels without any resistance, particularly a Sloop of 100 Tons, which they mounted with 8 carriages and 10 swivel guns. With this ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... down, Make him a dreamy, selfish, useless man: Indeed he felt himself deteriorate Already. Thereupon he sent down showers Of clattering stones, to emphasize his words, And leap the cliffs and tumble noisily Into the seething wave. And as for me, I railed at him and at ingratitude, While rifling of the basket he had slung Across his shoulders; then with right good will We fell to work, and feasted like the gods, Like laborers, or like eager workhouse folk At Yuletide dinner; or, to say the whole At once, like tired, hungry, healthy youth, Until the meal being o'er, the tilted flask ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... to remove all the principal men of the prize on board our ships, and only placed four of our men in the prize, for fear of rifling and pillaging the valuable commodities she contained, and gave these men strict warning, if any thing were amissing, that they should answer for the value out of their wages and shares, ordering them on no ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... Mr. Great-heart with his sword, helmet, and shield, and the rest with spears and staves.[241] When they came to the place where he was, they found him with one Feeble-mind in his hands, whom his servants had brought unto him, having taken him in the way. Now the giant was rifling him, with a purpose, after that, to pick his bones, for he was of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in Philadelphia, and defied the city authorities in this service of slavery. President Jackson and Amos Kendall, his Postmaster General, had openly set the Constitution at defiance by justifying the rifling of the mails and the suppression of the circulation of anti-slavery newspapers in the South. The "gag" resolutions had been introduced in the House of Representatives in 1836, which provoked the splendid fights of Adams, Giddings and Slade for the right of petition ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... at Brent Rock, Paul Balcom was rifling his father's papers in the apartment where Balcom had lived. He had unceremoniously thrown letters and documents all over the floor in his mad search for something. Finally he found what he was looking for, and, smiling triumphantly as he read the paper, he thrust it into his pocket ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... of the sergeants went to Mr. Lithgow, and begged his money, with liberty to search him. As it was needless to make any resistance, the prisoner quietly complied, when the sergeant (after rifling his pockets of eleven ducatoons) stripped him to his shirt; and searching his breeches he found, enclosed in the waistband, two canvass bags, containing one hundred and thirty-seven pieces of gold. The sergeant immediately ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... wretchedness over the destruction of all my dearest plans and hopes. If the Bow Street runners had come into the plantation just as I had completed the rifling of the desk I think I should have let them take me without making the slightest effort at escape. As it was, no living soul appeared within sight of me. I must have sat at the foot of a tree for full half an hour, with the doctor's useless bills ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... glittering helmet he had pressed down as low as he could on his forehead, and I could not discern his face ; but I was instantly certain he was not Bonaparte, on finding the whole commotion produced by the rifling crew above mentioned, which, though it might be guided, probably, by some subaltern officer, who might have the captive in charge, had left the field of battle at a moment when none other could be spared, as all the attendant throng were evidently amongst the refuse ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... saw that the German's rifle had been hurled quite ten yards. The barrel was partly wrenched from the stock, and for a distance of about a foot from the muzzle the steel had been split, revealing the glittering rifling. ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... important of individuals. If we liked, we could give you a description of the fete which should make all your mouths water; but everyone cooks now, and ekes out his page by robbing Jarrin and by rifling Ude. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Prince, "perhaps not; yet one can easily guess. By bribing the chambermaid, perhaps; by forcing a lock; by rifling her desk, examining her private papers. Oh, it is abominable!" and he turned upon the Frenchman, fury in ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... for R.M.L. guns were at first fitted with a number of gun-metal studs arranged around them in a spiral manner corresponding to the twist of rifling. This was defective, as it allowed, as in the old smooth-bore guns, the powder gas to escape by the clearance (called "windage") between the projectile and the bore, with a consequent loss of efficiency; it also quickly eroded the bore of the larger guns. Later the rotation was effected ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... three hours being in Carthage I rusht into a Temple. Starr'd all with lights; Which with my drawne sword rifling, in a roome Hung full of Pictures, drawne so full of sweetnesse They struck a reverence in me, found I a woman, A Lady all in white; the very Candles Took brightnesse from her eyes and those cleare Pearles Which ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... perceived a mob of people in the dusk. But as he got nearer, he saw that there were a man and two women. Wharton was on the ground, on his back, and the man was apparently kneeling on his neck and head while the women were rifling his pockets. Lopez, hardly knowing how he was acting, was upon them in a moment, flying in the first place at the man, who had jumped up to meet him as he came. He received at once a heavy blow on his head from some weapon, which, however, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... mother's a queer woman.—Ye see, there was an auld carle wi' a bit land, and a gude clat o' siller besides, just the very picture of old Mr. Feeblemind or Mr. Ready-to-halt, that Great-heart delivered from Slaygood the giant, when he was rifling him and about to pick his bones, for Slaygood was of the nature of the flesh-eaters—and Great-heart killed Giant Despair too—but I am doubting Giant Despair's come alive again, for a' the story book—I find him ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of merriment to Margaret Dunscombe and the maid, that they could hardly contain themselves. She did not find out that Miss Margaret's fingers were busy with her paper of sweets, which only a good string and a sound knot kept her from rifling. Yet she felt very well that nobody there cared in the least for her sorrow. It mattered nothing; she wept on in her loneliness, and knew nothing that happened, till the carriage stopped on the wharf; even then she did not raise ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... rifle carried a spherical bullet, and, like all others of the period, it necessitated the use of a mallet to strike the ball, which, being a size larger than the bore, required the blow to force it into the rifling of the barrel in order to catch ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... of guilt and shame had stabbed at Lord's mind. He had come, unasked, into an Eden. He didn't belong here. His presence meant pillage, a rifling of a sacred dream. The landing ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... he, "if you had a young and pretty wife, I am capable of running away with her, and possibly even of letting her persuade me to abscond with some of your property, but I am not capable of laying you out in cold blood and rifling that safe. And a good judge of men ought to be able to perceive this and not waste his time in trying to convict me of an offence I couldn't commit. On the other hand, if the crime was one that my type is apt to commit he would be ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... made me suspect that she knew Mrs. Sloman to be sound asleep at this moment; but she said nothing, and waited respectfully until I had scribbled a hasty note, rifling Bessie's writing-desk for the envelope in which to put my card. Dear child! there lay my photograph, the first thing I saw as I ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell |
