"Rifleman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hospital, we agreed to get a canteen apiece, and go round among the dead, and fill them with Jamaica. When our canteens were about a third full, we came upon a young American rifleman, who was lying under an appletree. He was hit in the head, and was in a very bad way. We were all three much struck with the appearance of this young man, and I now remember him as one of the handsomest youths I had ever seen. His wound did not bleed, though I thought ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... raw troops, any intended onslaught of Santa Anna, who would bring with him several times as large a force, of all sorts, most of it composed of recent levies, imperfectly organized and disciplined. It remained to be seen which of the two kinds of men, the Mexican Indian or the American rifleman, could be the more rapidly changed into a trained soldier, fitted ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... be done in my own way. I have means which can make the tardy quick, and open the eyes of the blind. You shall be a subaltern in the Guards, unless you are in too much haste to be a general, and get yourself shot by some Parisian cobbler in the purloined uniform of a rifleman. But, let me tell you one fact, and I might indorse this piece of intelligence, 'Secret and Confidential,' to the English cabinet, for even our great minister has yet to learn it—the Allies will never reach Paris. Rely, and act upon this. They might now enter the capital, if, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... because we wish to suggest a comparison between the sighting of a rifle at the target and the sighting of a telescope at a star. Instead of the ordinary large bull's-eye, suppose that the target only consisted of a watch-dial, which, of course, the rifleman could not see at the distance of any ordinary range. But with the telescope of the meridian circle the watch-dial would be visible even at the distance of a mile. The meridian circle is indeed capable of such precision ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... day he consulted the lists of killed and wounded, and once had staggered white-lipped to the mortuary-shed to identify a Jane Harris, and found her—oh, with what unutterable relief!—to be a coloured lady who had married a Rifleman. After that he had perked up, and continued his quest for the beloved needle lost in the haystack of Gueldersdorp with renewed belief in the ultimate possibility of finding it. Then, in the middle of one awful night, the darkness of his mental state had been luridly illuminated ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... bout with the foe, and dismounting, was entering the door when a soldier in blue dashed at him with leveled musket. Naturally not keen to create alarm, Fitzgibbons knocked the weapon from the man's hand, and without a sound had thrown him on the ground, when another American rifleman dashed from behind. Strong as a lion, Fitzgibbons threw the first man violently against the second, and was holding both at bay beneath his leveled rifle when one of the downed men snatched the Irishman's sword from the scabbard. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... trick. Jenks courted his acquaintance, and saw him shatter a row of glasses of different sizes by sounding different notes on his fiddle. The glasses crashed one after another like gelatine balls hit by the bullets of an expert rifleman. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... silver leet, An' th' wind wor softly sighin, Th' burds did sleep, an' th' snails did creep, An' th' buzzards wor a flying; Th' daisies donned ther neet caps on, An' th buttercups wor weary, When Jenny went to meet her John, Her Rifleman, ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... French ones to carry the news of their own defeat through a thick wood, at an infantry canter, when I found myself all at once within a few yards of one of their regiments in line, which opened such a fire, that had I not, rifleman like, taken instant advantage of the cover of a good fir tree, my name would have unquestionably been transmitted to posterity by that night's gazette. And, however opposed it may be to the usual system of drill, I will maintain, ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... a Cobra di Capello Combat of Wild Animals Perilous Incident on a Canadian River Leopard Hunting Hunting the White Rhinoceros A Leopard Hunt Life in California A Storm among the Icebergs Fall of the Rossberg The Rifleman of Chippewa Shipwreck of the Blendenhall Adventures of Sergeant Champe Adventure with Pirates Kenton, the Spy The Dying Volunteer Escape from a Mexican Quicksand Charged by a Rhinoceros Burning of the Erie Conflict with an Indian Fire on the Prairies The Captain's ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... of the mountain-rifleman is characterized by simplicity and a strict attention to business. The nature of the ground over which he works inexorably prescribes this. The superfluities of the fox-hunter or the partridge-shooter with his dog-cart cannot be his. Hatchet, pouch, knife and knapsack, with alpenstock on occasion, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... forest, unseen within a hundred yards of me, and would have given all I had or hoped for just to have a friend within speaking distance, a shot rang out in the forest ahead, and rattled from tree to tree like the echo of a skirmish. It was not from Fred's gun, or Will's. It was the phantom rifleman at work again. Schillingschen—Schillingschen's ghost—or whoever he was, he could not have timed his fusillade better for our undoing. The first shot was followed by six more in swift succession. And then ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... such is the terror which he has inspired, that the Indians who go in quest of him paint themselves and perform all the superstitious rites customary when they make war on a neighboring nation. Hitherto, those bears we had seen did not appear desirous of encountering us; but although to a skilful rifleman the danger is very much diminished, yet the white bear is still a terrible animal. On approaching these two, both Captain Lewis and the hunter fired, and each wounded a bear. One of them made his escape; the ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... volley firing which destroys all individual aim. With the experience of the first Boer war behind them, little was done, either in tactics or in musketry, to prepare the soldier for the second. The value of the mounted rifleman, the shooting with accuracy at unknown ranges, the art of taking cover—all ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Perhaps this was the very thought which turned the wanderer's desires again towards the land of Kentucky. * The silencing of the enemy's whisper in the Cherokee camps had opened the border forests once more to the nomadic rifleman. Boone was not alone in the desire to seek out what lay beyond. His brother-in-law, John Stewart, and a nephew by marriage, Benjamin Cutbirth, or Cutbird, with two other young men, John Baker and James Ward, in 1766 crossed the Appalachian Mountains, probably by stumbling upon ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... of a conflict of which he saw little save that directly in front of his own window. He was conscious of a second insignificant rifle-crack at his right, and heard other shots from Blount's window at the left. His own work he did methodically, feeling that his duty was plain to him. He was a rifleman. His firing was not aimless, but exact, ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... expedition to Estcourt. A council of war was held, and an assault on the Platrand[32] was determined on for the 30th. On the previous evening the commandos detailed as covering parties on the left flank went into position on Rifleman's Ridge, and awaited the main attack. Meanwhile much had happened in the laagers. The decisions of the Boer Krijgsraad seem to have been subject to confirmation by a minor convention composed of the subordinate officers. ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... I could hold in no longer, but joining in the loud cachinnation—as if we had been its echoes—sprang forward to the front. Infantry and rifleman bounded to their feet, with a simultaneous shout of "Indians!" and dropping their spits and half-eaten appolas of meat, dashed into the bushes like a pair of frightened rabbits! In an instant, both were out of sight; and their whereabouts ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... a Mississippi stream for it," said Dick in the same vein, and passed on leaving the rifleman in high good humor. How wonderfully these Southerners were like the Northerners! He noticed presently a half-dozen other sharpshooters in the Confederate butternut, prowling among the bushes, and through an opening he saw his own people to the west, but too ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the board, Tom Loftus put his hand into his pocket and pulled out the butt-end of a rifle, which is always furnished with a small box, cut out of the solid part of the wood and covered with a plate of brass acting on a hinge. This box, intended to carry small implements for the use of the rifleman, to keep his piece in order, was filled with snuff, and Tom said, as he laid it down on the table, "This is my snuff-box, gentlemen; not as handsome as my gallant friend's at the opposite side of the table, but extremely interesting to me. It was previous ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... and it brought no solace, and the day returned, but to her it brought no light. Theodora was no longer seen. The soul of the camp seemed extinct. The mien of majesty that ennobled all; the winning smile that rewarded the rifleman at his practice and the sapper at his toil; the inciting word that reanimated the recruit and recalled to the veteran the glories of Sicilian struggles—all vanished—all seemed spiritless and dull, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the recent skirmish, they found that nine horses and two men had been killed, the latter unintentionally, besides the rifleman of their own party. Many other horses were lying wounded, in the struggles of death, and several of their riders were seated on the ground, disabled by bruises or dislocations. Huertis' men buried their comrades in a grave hastily dug with the spears which lay around ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... degree of skill no man out of romance has ever been reported to possess amongst riflemen. We have seen the best marksmen the continent holds attempt to drive the nail at fifty yards, and take fifty balls to drive one nail. A story is current of a French rifleman shooting an Arab chief a mile distant, which, if true, was only a chance shot; for no human vision will serve the truest rifle ever made and the steadiest nerves ever strung to perform such a feat with any certainty. Lieutenant Busk informs us that Captain Minie "will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... along the Potomac," they say, "Except now and then a stray picket Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro, By a rifleman hid in the thicket. 'Tis nothing: a private or two, now and then, Will not count in the news of the battle; Not an officer lost,—only one of the men, Moaning ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... last 14 months of my active participation in the War taught me that the British mounted infantry was a very hard nut to crack. Of course everything depended upon the quality of the man and the horse. A good rifleman and a horseman, especially if he were able to fire when mounted, was a very formidable foe. As for horses, I may say that I do not wonder that the great unwieldy horses for which the British cavalrymen have such a predilection cannot ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... to your aim, Sir Everard," remarked Lieutenant Johnstone, one of Erskine's subalterns, "and both are decidedly superior to mine; yet I used to be thought a good rifleman too, and have credit for an eye no less keen than that of an Indian. You have the advantage of me, however; for I honestly admit I never could have picked off yon fellow in the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... enquiry and were separated by a space of fifty or sixty yards. Above each waved the flag of its respective country. A soldier was on guard outside either tent: a Prussian infantryman, helmet on head, shin-strap buckled; an Alpine rifleman, bonneted and gaitered. Each stood with his rifle ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... tree beside a tiny stream stood a three-legged cooking-pot, and round it lay three skeletons, with a scattering of shrapnel bullets to silently tell the story of the tragedy. Beside one body lay a Rifleman's haversack, an eloquent if speechless travesty on the fortunes of war, for undoubtedly they were the remains of Boers, over whose head a chance shrapnel must have ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... near reaching the summit of a hill, on which they could only get a glimpse of the weakest portion of a corps, composed of three regiments of cavalry of the Russian guard, and six pieces of cannon. There was not a single rifleman to cover ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... return, they being entirely concealed, and their presence merely indicated by the little puffs of white smoke which spurted out here and there, there was nothing to disturb their aim. For nothing spoils a rifleman's shooting like being exposed to accurate fire himself; which was probably the reason why duellists, who could perform wonders in the shooting gallery, used so often to miss each other at twelve paces in the days of single combat, when George the ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... rifleman was sleepy, and seeing no hope of plunder in the little bark, according to the tradition of his corps and the habit of this post, he let it pass. The guard at Pasig was ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... turn down his shirt-sleeves and button his cuffs, saying, "You're lucky to have a pain in your legs." Turning to the Turco, he added, "Lift him!" And the giant rifleman picked me up and laid me in a long ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... point upon the hillside below him, above the roar of cannon and the crack of rifle fire, a single rifle spit. Immediately his attention was centered upon the spot where he knew a sniper must be hid. Patiently he awaited the next shot that would tell him more surely the exact location of the rifleman, and when it came he moved down the steep hillside with the stealth and quietness of a panther. Apparently he took no cognizance of where he stepped, yet never a loose stone was disturbed nor a twig broken—it was as though ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... many ladies by the pillar that I cannot tell to a certainty which one you mean,' whispered my would-be informant. Stooping and glancing along my arm with the precision of a Kentucky rifleman, I brought my finger to bear directly upon the head of the unknown, who, as the devil would have it, at this critical juncture turned her head and encountered the deadly aim which we were taking ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... stiffened body, as it lay prone upon its face, was disturbed. Simpson stood there, pistol in hand, on guard until properly relieved, and as silent as a crouching rifleman on picket. The whole room bore the evidence of a thorough ransacking, and the disordered clothing of the nabob proved, too, that the body had been rifled. The mysterious nocturnal visits returned to Simpson's ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... across the road. A few yards to the right of the campfire and cache of cans was a rock pile. It was big enough to shield him, if he could make it. He took a deep breath. If he dodged and twisted fast enough, the rifleman probably couldn't hit him, and he would certainly have the man's full attention. That would ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... are worth more than many men without the special skill which is only found as the result of special training applied to men of exceptional physique and morale. But nowadays the most valuable fighting man and the most difficult to perfect is the rifleman who is also a skillful ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... fixed frowningly and contemptuously on those of the other man. The pistol barrel was held on his breast. Sansome fully intended to shoot, but found himself unable to pull the trigger. This is a condition every rifleman knows well by experience; he calls it being "frozen on the bull's eye," when, the alignment perfect, his rifle steady as a rock, he nevertheless cannot transmit just the little nerve power necessary to crook the ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Westminsters got along quickly and brought his Lewis gun to bear on the battery and, with an admirably directed fire, caused many casualties. Two gun teams were wiped out, either killed or wounded, by the corporal. At the same time Rifleman C.D. Smith, who had followed his comrade, rushed in on another team and bombed it. Smith's rifle had been smashed and was useless, but with his bombs he laid low all except one man. His supply was then exhausted, but before the Turk could use his weapons ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... thought mesilf,' says I. 'But, since I seen ye'er face,' he says, 'I've con-cluded that I'd be more comfortable hatin' ye thin havin' ye f'r a frind,' says he. 'Ye're a man iv taste,' says I. An' we backed away fr'm each other. He's a Tip, an' can throw a stone like a rifleman; an', Hinnissy, I'm somethin' iv an amachoor shot with ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... whose department was left in charge of Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury. Just before he left, the president received a letter from the venerable Morgan, written at Winchester on the twenty-fourth of September. "I am sorry to understand," wrote the brave old rifleman, "the difficulty experienced in the state of Pennsylvania to raise the quota of men to suppress that horrid insurrection on their frontiers.[70] The state of Virginia seems to be unanimous and determined to suppress it; and it is my opinion that we shall, in a very ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Packard, making what haste was possible in the thick dark and with what silence was allowed them, had gone a score of paces deeper into the canon, the crack of a rifle shouted its reverberating message of menace back and forth in the rocky ravine, a spurt of flame showed where the rifleman stood upon a pinnacle of rock almost directly above their heads and there came the further sounds of men's startled voices and the scampering of horses' hoofs, fleeing southward through ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... speak, shut the principal gate in the huge wall which in that particular part closed in their country from Natal. The man I had seen was doubtless one of their outposts, and for aught I knew to the contrary the pass might be held by hundreds of the sturdy burghers, every man a born rifleman. To go back by the way I came meant running into the arms of those who were scouring the country to retake me, while to make a detour and get round to the other side of the opening meant getting farther into the Boer country, the more populous ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... of Canada to their homes in the British colonies were destined to move on to Canada with their families as United Empire Loyalists. This was their first war; and they did so well in it that Wolfe gave them the rifleman's motto they still bear in token of their smartness and dash—Celer et Audax. Unfortunately they did not then wear the famous 'rifle green' but the ordinary red. Unfortunately, too, the rifleman's green ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... the pilot be unaccompanied and entirely dependent upon his own resources he cannot hope to fire vertically above him, for the simple reason that in so doing he must relinquish control of his machine. A rifle cannot possibly be sighted under such conditions, inasmuch as it demands that the rifleman shall lean back so as to obtain control of his weapon and to bring it to bear upon his objective. Even if a long range Mauser or other automatic pistol of the latest type be employed, two hands are necessary for firing purposes, ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot |
