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More "Skirmish" Quotes from Famous Books



... temper had some life in it, you used to bestir yourself against crime and violence; there were no armistices in those days; the thunderbolt was always hard at it, the aegis quivering, the thunder rattling, the lightning engaged in a perpetual skirmish. Earth was shaken like a sieve, buried in snow, bombarded with hail. It rained cats and dogs (if you will pardon my familiarity), and every shower was a waterspout. Why, in Deucalion's time, hey presto, everything was swamped, mankind went ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... the arithmetic of his authorities that Mr. Wilson undertakes to rectify. When they describe a pitched battle, he asserts that it was a mere skirmish. When they speak of a large town, he tells us it was a rude hamlet. When they portray the magnificence of the city of Mexico, he says that they are "painting wild figments"—whatever that may mean,—and that Montezuma's capital was a mere collection of huts. Cortes tells us, that, in his retreat, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... breath in useless entreaty, Brown seized the light form of Hester in his arms and ran with her to the ramparts. In the confusion of the general skirmish he was not observed—or, if observed, unheeded—by any one but Sally, who followed him in anxious haste, thinking that the man was mad, for there could be no possible way of escape, she thought, in that direction. ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne

... "Rest-day accordingly, in Bautzen neighborhood; nothing passing but a curious Skirmish of Horse,—in which Friedrich, who had gone westward reconnoitring, seeking Lacy, had the main share, and was notably situated for some time. Godau, a small town or village, six miles west of Bautzen, was the scene of this notable passage: actors in it were Friedrich himself, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... combatants. And, the dwellers of the Gandhamadana, beholding the Pandavas looking like blazing guardians of the world provoked to ire, stood arrayed in order of battle. And, O Bharata, in accordance with words of king Yudhishthira of great wisdom, the encounter that took place was a skirmish. But when Arjuna—that persecutor of foes—saw that the foolish soldiers of the king of Gandharvas could not be made to understand what was good for them by means of a light skirmish, he addressed those invincible ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... tinkler, tinker. tint, lost. tirravee, fit of passion. tow, rope. trailin', walking slowly. traivelled, walked. trampin', walking. tribbles, troubles. trokit, done business in a small way. tryst, appointment, make an appointment. tuggit, tugged. tuilzie, quarrel, fight, skirmish. twa-fauld, ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie

... it is true, go any reasonable distance to put out a fire; but of course it pays most attention to property which its proprietors have guaranteed. The central station receives the greatest number of "calls;" but as a commander-in-chief does not turn out for a skirmish of outposts, so Mr. Braidwood keeps himself ready for affairs of a more serious nature. When the summons is at night—there are sometimes as many as half-a-dozen—the fireman on duty below apprizes the superintendent by means of ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.

... brigands were scampering, some on foot and some on horseback, out of the farm buildings, followed by a few stray and harmless shots from such of the volunteers as had their hands free. We lost three men killed and five wounded in this little skirmish, and killed six of the brigands, besides making a dozen prisoners. When I say "we" I mean my companions, for, having no weapon, I had discreetly remained with the volunteers. The scene of this gallant exploit was on the classic battle-field of Cannae. This captain, who was not the ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... was shot in the course of a skirmish, and the revolution was now finally crushed. The numbers who paid the fullest penalty for their active discontent were very great, and the final embers of the insurrection were extinguished to the tune of ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... together men grow to depend upon, and to support, each other, and to subordinate their individual wills to the will of the leader. And if that were all that training profited them, they would rarely win a battle or a skirmish under modern conditions! ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... novelettes very bitterly. These encounters indeed were mere skirmishes for the most part, and the silences and embarrassments that followed ended sooner or later in a "making up," tacit or definite, though once or twice this making up only re-opened the healing wound. And always each skirmish left its scar, effaced from yet another line of their lives the ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... the father of wood-engraving in this country, died in Jersey City, in 1870, a few weeks before his ninety-fifth birthday. He was born in New York two days after the skirmish at Lexington, and had vivid recollections of some of the closing incidents of the Revolution in that city. From his lips the writer heard many narratives of those stirring scenes. One of them was an account of the last battle of the Revolution, of which ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... she was Aunt B., an amateur, the mockery of whose eyes sometimes penetrated their youthful armour; they were besides too interested in their conversation to perceive that she was suffering. The skirmish of that conversation had lasted now for many days—ever since the death of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... his brother, and there was a skirmish between them, during which Miss Morley vainly exclaimed by turns, "Now Lionel!" and "Now Johnny!" It ended by John's beginning to cry, Lionel laughing at him, and declaring that he had done nothing to hurt him, and both walking off rather sullenly to dress for the evening. ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Rimrock's lawyers orated and thundered or artfully framed up their long questions; it took days to do it, but when the testimony was all in it was apparent that Ike Bray's claim would hold. But this was only the beginning of the battle, the skirmish to feel out the ground; and now the defense brought up its big guns. One after the other they put experts on the stand to testify to the geology of the Tecolote; but Cummins and Ford produced others as eminent who ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... skirmish; then as usual, Mac conquered, and Gifford Barrett was led, an unwilling victim, to the awning where sat Mac's mother, beyond her a serried rank of Mac's relatives and, beyond them all, a tall girl in a black suit who watched ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... aware of her flight, George was thankful that the girl had disappeared. He perceived that he had too quickly eliminated Percy from the list of the Things That Matter. Engrossed with his own affairs, and having regarded their late skirmish as a decisive battle from which there would be no rallying, he had overlooked the possibility of this annoying and unnecessary person following them in another cab—a task which, in the congested, slow-moving traffic, must have been a perfectly simple one. Well, here ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... approaching his sixtieth year, but was vigorous and attentive to business. He was a fine speaker. His voice was melodious, and its compass exceeded belief. It could be heard along the line of a whole brigade, and in the clatter of a skirmish. It is one of the traditions of the bar, that he could, by condensing his voice as he approached it, break a pane of glass in pieces. His learning was respectable; and with the jury he had great weight; and he was heard with respect ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... followed the seas in his youth, and visited England, Spain, and Holland; frank and agreeable in manners, well fitted for such a command, and respected and loved by his men. [Footnote: See the notice of Williams in Mass. Hist. Coll., VIII. 47. He was killed in the bloody skirmish that preceded the Battle of Lake George in 1755. Montcalm and Wolfe, chap. ix.] When the proposed invasion of Canada was preparing, he and some of his men went to take part in it, and had not yet returned. The ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... were men of ability, and one was most weak and incompetent. Fortunately for Syracuse, Alcibiades, the most skilful of the three, was soon deposed from his command by a factious and fanatic vote of his fellow-countrymen, and the other competent one, Lamachus, fell early in a skirmish; while, more fortunately still for her, the feeble and vacillating Nicias remained unrecalled and unhurt, to assume the undivided leadership of the Athenian army and fleet, and to mar, by alternate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... Lord Ruthven, the earl told him he must now salute him as Lord Badenoch, his brother having been killed a few days before in a skirmish on the skirts of Ettrick Forest. Ruthven then turned to welcome the entrance of Bruce, who, raising his visor, received from the loyal chief the homage due to his sovereign dignity. Wallace and the prince soon engaged him in a discourse immediately connected ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... divining that she meant the kitchen, fled down-stairs. I stole a look at Emma Hulett's face as she bent over the sister she had not seen in thirty years, and I knew that Mrs. Purdon's battle was won. It even seemed that she had won another skirmish in her never-ending war with death, for a little warmth began to ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... you want him to change the masther's mind upon the subject. Faith and you're just in luck after this mornin's skirmish—skirmish! no bedad, but a field day itself; the masther could refuse him nothing. Will I say what you ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... well for you to joke about the poor! You may skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman's, or humour a love like my old nurse's, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... the prejudice of his race, for he made a dart for him. The horse did not flinch, but stood still till the giant was almost upon him. Then, at the command of his master, he wheeled, and the rider gave the big beast a smart punch with his lance. For a few minutes there was a lively skirmish between them, the horseman pricking him on the trunk or the flanks, and the rage of the elephant was ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... few enough so far; vestiges, traces of Cromwell's doings in the eastern counties; a successful skirmish at Grantham, a "notable victory" at Gainsborough. In August, Manchester takes command of the Association, with Cromwell for one of his colonels; in September, first battle of Newbury, and signing of the Solemn League and Covenant at Westminster. Cromwell has written ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... sending for his sons, now growing boys, from Miletus, and submitting them, at Agesilaus's advice, to the famous Spartan education. They grew up fine and warlike young men, so that the death of one of them, Gryllus, in a cavalry skirmish just before the great battle of Mantinea (362 B.C.) caused universal regret. But long before this catastrophe the Spartans gave Xenophon possession of an estate at Skillus, near the famous Olympia, which combined the pleasures of seclusion and of field sports with those ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... the ground to-day, boys, Tread each remembered spot. It will be a gleesome journey, On the swift-shod feet of thought; You can fight a bloodless battle, You can skirmish along the route, But it's not worth while to forage, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... staied six daies, and sixtene too, without hearing any word of the gouernors comming. Then the winter beginning to wax cold, and foule weather still increasing, caused the king to breake vp his siege, and so returned without battell or skirmish offered. ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed

... month our cavalry relieved the infantry on the line of the Rapidan, and on the nineteenth, in a sharp skirmish between Stuart's and Bayard's forces, Captain Charles Walters, of the Harris Light Cavalry, was killed. This officer was very popular in the regiment, and his death cast a gloom over all. Wrapped in a ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... have them sent back, or others as good in their places. Oh, you do not know how dreadful to be at feud with a man like Fergus Mac-Ivor. I was only a girl of ten when my father and his servants had a skirmish with a party of them, near our home-farm—so near, indeed, that some of the windows of the house were broken by the bullets, and three of the Highland raiders were killed. I remember seeing them brought in and laid on the floor ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... scientific men no imagination? Have you no mercy? We cannot have our world trampled under a growing herd of such monsters and monstrous growths as your Food has made. We cannot and we cannot! I ask you, Sir, what can it be but war? And remember—this that has happened is only a beginning I This was a skirmish. A mere affair of police. Believe me, a mere affair of police. Do not be cheated by perspective, by the immediate bigness of these newer things. Behind us is the nation—is humanity. Behind the thousands ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... though of several parties (as it oft falls out amongst frontier neighbours), the Sieur de Licques carried her; but on the same day he was married, and which was worse, before he went to bed to his wife, the bridegroom having a mind to break a lance in honour of his new bride, went out to skirmish near St. Omer, where the Sieur d'Estrees proving the stronger, took him prisoner, and the more to illustrate his victory, the lady ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... the brave Pole, was his chief engineer, and under his direction the Americans commenced making regular approaches, by parallels, for the works were too strong to be taken by assault. For almost a month the work went on, enlivened by an occasional sortie and skirmish. Then news came that Lord Rawdon was approaching with a strong force to the relief of Cruger. Greene's troops were full of spirit, and were anxious to storm the works before his lordship's arrival. Consent was given by the commander, and on the eighteenth ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... together with the other English subjects in the emperor's power, and the sum stipulated to be paid for their release, was 170,000 dollars. Our people accordingly set out for Sallee, attended by a bashaw and two soldiers on horseback. On the fourth day of their march, they had a skirmish with some of the country Moors. The dispute began in consequence of some of our men in the rear stopping at a village to buy some milk, for which, after they had drank it, the Moors demanded an exorbitant price. This our men refused to give, on which the Moors had recourse ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... too great trouble to speak, so Philip narrated the little skirmish, concluding with the loss ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... there was an outsider present, there was sure to be a skirmish. Such a life must have been wearisome, and of course she must have longed for a home of her own. Besides, there was her age to be considered; there was no time left to pick and choose; it was a case of marrying anybody, even a Greek master. And, indeed, most of our young ladies ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... as he entered, as if she were watching for him. He had seen her the previous evening, and they had had a more lively skirmish than usual. He was struck by her brilliancy—her beauty heightened, without doubt, by the secret ardor of the quarrel, as if illuminated by an interior flame, with all the clear, soft splendor of a transparent ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... worshipful burgher! and let our skirmish end in something that may be useful to both. Thou hast that which would be acceptable to me, and I have that which no owner of cheeses would refuse, did he know the means by which it might ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... the spring of 1827 in an attempt to relieve him from the Attic coast; Grand Admiral Cochrane saw his fleet sail home for want of payment in advance, when he summoned it for review at Poros; and Karaiskakis, the Greek captain of Armatoli, was killed in a skirmish during his more successful efforts to harass Rashid's communications by land. On June 5, 1827, the Greek garrison of the Akropolis marched ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... person betrayed owes her a debt of gratitude, for you know how difficult it is for him to use his limbs, and she is most obligingly smoothing the path for him. I tell you, Luis, with all due respect for his Majesty as a general and a statesman, in a skirmish of intrigue this woman will outwit you all. The schemes her aged brain invents have neither fault nor flaw. The wheels work upon one another as they do in the Emperor's best Nuremberg clock. I want to watch their turning before I go, for, be it known to you, early tomorrow morning—the saints be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... that one is at no loss for a director at every turn. But of these matters I shall say little." If these attacks had any effect on him, it was only to make him more determined in carrying out his purposes. In the first skirmish, which ended in the recall of Genet, he not only prevailed, but the French minister's audacity especially in venturing to appeal to the people against their President, demoralized the opposition and ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... exordium, the powerful skirmish line of the address. Assuming the existence of the evil, he advanced boldly to his theme, viz., the duty of abolishing it. To this end he laid down four propositions, as a skillful general plants his cannon on the heights overlooking and commanding his enemies' works. The first, broadly stated, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... i te arahu i te umaru," the natives termed the skirmish. "The conflict of the limes, the coal, and the potatoes." A new himene was improvised about it, and I heard the girls of the Maison des Cocotiers chanting it as I went to ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... it—he remembered, with a pang, another skirmish, another battle of words—with another adversary, in a different scene. The thrill of that moment in the Tallyn drawing-room, when he had felt himself Diana's conqueror; delighting in her rosy surrender, which was ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... volunteered to go with them—Mr. Tradition, Mr. Human Wisdom, and Mr. Man's Invention.' They were allowed to join, and were placed in positions of trust, the captains of the covenant being apparently wanting in discernment. They were taken prisoners in the first skirmish, and immediately changed sides and went over to Diabolus. More battles follow. The roof of the Lord Mayor's house is beaten in. The law is not wholly ineffectual. Six of the Aldermen, the grosser ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... to attack them in force," he said, "it would be imprudent upon every hand. In the first place they would have the advantage of us, of course, in a mountain skirmish." ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... be carefully poled up the Alleghany shore against the current, then headed out and vigorously paddled towards the Pittsburgh side. Nearing the enemies' headquarters a skirmish would be opened by a shower of stones sent into their ranks. If the Pittsburghers were not sufficiently numerous to repel the invasion, the "Gray Eagle" was landed. The majority of the crew pursued the flying enemy up the back streets, while the balance remained and hastily loaded up the best ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... dashing up the defile at the head of the artillery, had been prepared to find a lively skirmish in progress between his own comrades and the handful of Afghans who were luring them on. But when, on emerging on to the plain, he found himself and the guns more than half surrounded by the enemy, and no sign anywhere of Atherton, he felt that the "brush" was ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... Lopez's forces, after an engagement the bodies of the soldiers who had been killed in the battle were left to rot where they fell, as there were no civilians to bury them. On one occasion, after a heavy skirmish, two or three hundred slain Argentines remained unburied, the army having marched forward in pursuit of the retreating Paraguayans. The horrors of this campaign were relieved by one prosaic fact, which in itself bridges the chasm between ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... title of the battalion indicates, it was always in the front, on the advanced skirmish-line, pending a battle. It will be remembered by all the heroes of the Army of Tennessee that nearly every regiment in that army at the time of the battle of Chickamauga had on its battle-flag "cross-cannon," which signified the ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... jostle him against the Wall, which Vernole would patiently put up, and pass on; so that he could never be provok'd to fight by Day-light, how solitary soever the Place was where they met: but if they chanc'd to meet at Night, they were certain of a Skirmish, in which he would have no part himself; so that Rinaldo was often like to be assassinated, but still came off with some slight Wound. This continu'd so long, and made so great a Noise in the Town, that the two old Gentlemen were mightily alarm'd by ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... ancestors failed. Or the Turks again; you may recall the characteristic ferocity with which they opened their career. A handful of them were on some mission to the Emperor. The town was besieged from the landward side by the barbarians, and the Asiatics obtained leave to take part in a skirmish. The first Turk galloped out, shot a barbarian with his arrow, and then, lying down beside him, proceeded to suck his blood, which so horrified the man's comrades that they could not be brought to face such uncanny adversaries. So, from opposite ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Peninsular campaign. When attacked from an ambush a Spanish column forms at once into a hollow square, with the cavalry in the centre, and the firing is done in platoons. They know nothing of "open order," or of firing in skirmish line. If the Cubans were only a little better marksmen than their enemies they should, with such a target as a square furnishes them, kill about ten men ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis

... warmer every year. The Eastern immigrant societies were met by inroads of Missouri and Southern settlers. A state of civil war virtually obtained in 1856-57, and throughout Buchanan's administration there was a sharp skirmish of new settlers and a sharp maneuver of parties for position. The Georgia State Democratic Convention of 1857 demanded the removal of Robert J. Walker, who had been appointed Governor of Kansas. He was a Southern man, but was regarded as favoring the antislavery party in its efforts ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... me, Captain Granet," he said, "to ask my aid in getting you a job. Well, if I could give you one where I was perfectly certain that you would be shot in your first skirmish, I would give it to you, with pleasure. Under present conditions, however, it is my impression that the further you are from any British fighting force, the better it will be for the safety ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a Cuban Patriot.)—It is now known that the battle was only a skirmish. The Spaniards attacked our men in order to seize upon their extra linen. They ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... thousand warriors, extending up and down the river for a distance of six miles. There was nothing for the Spaniards to do but to press forward. To turn back, in sight of their foes, was not to be thought of. After a pretty sharp skirmish, in which the Spaniards attacked their opponents, the natives sprang into their canoes, and some by swimming crossed the river and joined the main body of the Indians ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... way toward the door, his pride a little wounded at being defeated in the initial skirmish, his confident optimism looking forward eagerly to a more skilful attack. And then a word from Miss Hazleton brought him back ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... in a debilitated state, and enquired if they had lost any men at sea. He acquainted them with the revenge taken by the Eimeo people, and asked why they had not brought out some cattle, etc. He also mentioned the death of Omai, and the New Zealand boys, and added, that there had been a skirmish between the men of Uliatea and those of Huaheine, in which the former were victorious, and that a great part of Omai's property was carried to Uliatea. O'too was considerably improved in his person, ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... swallow's nest, Built of clay and hair of horses, Mane, or tail, or dragoon's crest, Found on hedge-rows east and west, After skirmish ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous

... Robert soon learned, was the young officer, George Washington, who had commanded the Virginians in the first skirmish with the French and ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... fleet, his cheeks burning with rage. In the first preliminary skirmish with the enemy, he realized he had been beaten. He had found out nothing of value. Had damaged his boat too, no doubt. Well, he'd make somebody pay for it before morning. Circling his boats, he gave orders for an immediate advance in the direction ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... read the burial service, as we had no chaplain with us. While this was going on, the Sioux warriors recovered from their panic and came back to give us battle. All around the attack a fight began. I was on the skirmish line, and noticed an Indian who was riding a large bay horse, and giving orders to his men in his ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)

... After a preliminary skirmish with Carlstadt, resulting in the latter's banishment from Saxony, there was a long and bitter war of pens between Wittenberg and the Swiss Reformers. Once the battle was joined it was sure to be acrimonious because of the self-consciousness of each side. Luther always assumed that he had ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... Emperor had invaded Saxony with forty thousand troops. Whether the news be true I know not. This is a fine griffonage, to be sure! but I have not patience to write prettily; if you can only read it, it will do well enough. A propos, I saw in the papers that, in a skirmish between the Saxons and Croats, a Saxon captain of grenadiers named Hopfgarten had lost his life, and was much lamented. Can this be the kind, worthy Baron Hopfgarten whom we knew at Paris with Herr von Bose? I should grieve if it were, but I would rather ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... own marched until they had reached the end of it nearest to the city, when they took up their position in a close formation, and the native regiments fell in behind them. Clay selected twenty of the best shots from among the engineers and sent them on ahead as a skirmish line. They were ordered to fall back at once if they saw any sign of the enemy. In this order the column of four thousand men started ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... A slight skirmish took place on the first advance of the troops, and a sharper one next morning; but the enemy were effectually driven back, and the heights which command the harbour of Ferrol gained, with the loss in all of sixteen ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... While a skirmish was going on one day, Wolfdietrich escaped through the postern gate, and, riding into the forest, rapidly disappeared in the direction of Lombardy, where he intended to ask the aid of Ortnit. Riding through the deserts of Roumelia, where his guardian had bidden him ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... of this account of the interview with Bismarck produced through Paris a shiver of indignation. For a moment all parties were united, the very Reds crying out that there must be no more parties, only Frenchmen; and a slight success in a skirmish in one of the suburbs of Paris roused enthusiasm to its height ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... In the skirmish a scrap of paper fluttered to the ground. Roger seized it with avidity, and, crouching on the floor, smoothed the paper out ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... to beat into the bushes on the right, and K and A were sent over the ridge on which we stood down into the hollow to connect with General Young's column on the opposite side of the valley. F and E Troops were deployed in skirmish-line on the other side of the wire fence. Wood had discovered the enemy a few hundred yards from where he expected to find him, and so far from being "surprised," he had time, as I have just described, to get five of his troops into position before a shot was fired. The firing, when it ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis

... out all right, and so will Marcy," said Billings confidently. "Wait till this excitement culminates in a fight, and then you will see a big change of opinion among these weak-kneed chaps. They expect a skirmish this morning and are prepared for it. We'll see fun before that new flag of ours goes up on the tower, ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon

... feet and clung to their knees. With some difficulty the major stopped the slaughter, and had the four terrified girls locked up in a room under the care of two soldiers, and then he organized the pursuit of the fugitive, as carefully as if they were about to engage in a skirmish, feeling quite sure that she ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... during his reign," said Harvey, "but I fancy the accounts of them were much exaggerated; news was very unreliable in those days, and there were practically no war correspondents, so generals and commanders could magnify every little skirmish they engaged in till they reached the proportions of decisive battles. Louis was really famous, now, as a landscape gardener; the way he laid out Versailles was so much admired that it was copied ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... without delay against that which must follow before they could abandon themselves fully to the enjoyment of their victory. This, after all, was no more than a preliminary skirmish, although it was one that afforded them the key to the situation. It remained to dispose so that the utmost profit might be drawn from it. Those dispositions occupied some very considerable portion of the night. But, at least, they were complete ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... glorious riot of red summer flowers, they met their regiment returning. They had done their work, the Turks had ceased attacking and the weary regiment which had been kept busy the long, hot days in this outpost skirmish had been relieved. The tired troopers trailed homewards, carelessly tramping the dewy wild poppy heads on their way. A bathe and a drink, and then a long, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... beforehand by the Spanish and German envoys, produced on the whole army the effect of a spark applied to a train of gunpowder. Commines and the Venetian 'proveditori' each tried in vain to arrest the combat an either side. Light troops, eager for a skirmish, and, in the usual fashion of those days, prompted only by that personal courage which led them on to danger, had already come to blows, rushing down into the plain as though it were an amphitheatre where they might make a fine display of arms. Far a moment the young king, drawn on by example, ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... struggled to his feet, the spear still protruding from his shoulder. The girl rose too, and as Tarzan wrenched the weapon from his flesh and stepped out from behind the concealment of their refuge, she followed at his side. The skirmish that had resulted in their rescue was soon over. Most of the lions escaped but all of the pursuing Xujans had been slain. As Tarzan and the girl came into full view of the group, a British Tommy leveled his rifle at the ape-man. Seeing the fellow's actions and realizing ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Tygart's valley, Indians attack the house of Samuel Cottrail, Murder of John Schoolcraft's family, Projected campaign of British and Indians, Indians again in Tygart's Valley, mischief there, West's fort invested, Hazardous adventure of Jesse Hughs to obtain assistance, Skirmish between whites and savages, coolness and intrepidity of Jerry Curl, Austin Schoolcraft killed and his niece taken prisoner, Murder of Owens and Judkins, of Sims, Small Pox terrifies Indians, Transactions ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... waited for her turn in a fever of impatience. She caught the opening strains of the orchestra as it swung into the favorite melody of the day; she could hear the thud of dancing feet overhead. She was like a stoker shut up in the hold of the vessel while a lively skirmish is in progress ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... months Walter and Orige Avery lived at Bradmond, during which time Clare was born. She was only a few weeks old when the summons came for her father to rejoin his ship. He had been gone two months, when news reached Bradmond of a naval skirmish with the Spaniards off the Scilly Isles, in which great havoc had been made among the Queen's forces, and in the list of the ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... at his very feet, nor did he once raise them while the doctor told him how the sad news had come. "Picard the notary brought us the Moniteur, and there was Commandant Raynal among the killed in a cavalry skirmish." With this, he took the journal from his pocket, and Camille read it, with awe-struck, and other feelings he would have been sorry to see analyzed. He said not a word; and lowered ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... functions of army society, such as reveille and mess, is rapidly going out of date. It is said on excellent authority that it will soon be supplanted by a chapeau closely resembling the cocked hat worn by certain goodly gentlemen of Boston and vicinity during skirmish drill at Lexington and Concord, Mass. The portrait shown herewith depicts one of the makeshifts now much ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces

... daily drunk with brimming healths to the king, council, and bishops; held orgies with the Laird of Lagg, Theophilus Oglethorpe, and Sir James Turner; and lastly, took his gray gelding, and joined Clavers at Killiecrankie. At the skirmish of Dunkeld, 1689, he was shot dead by a Cameronian with a silver button (being supposed to have proof from the Evil One against lead and steel), and his grave is still called, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... to make a book out of the letters in order to get back the thousand dollars which they had paid for them. I said that if they had acted fairly and honorably, and had allowed the country press to use the letters or portions of them, my lecture-skirmish on the coast would have paid me ten thousand dollars, whereas the "Alta" had lost me that amount. Then he offered a compromise: he would publish the book and allow me ten per cent. royalty on it. The compromise did not appeal to me, and I said so. I was now quite unknown ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... to have known," Jack grumbled. "Somehow everything has gone wrong with us. If we ride back in the night we'll probably have a skirmish." ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson

... boys, who formed themselves into a party, received rifles, and were exceedingly useful. By the 4th of the month, General Mooers collected about 700 militia, and advanced seven miles on the Beekmantown road, to watch the motions of the enemy, and to skirmish with him as he advanced; also to obstruct the roads with fallen trees, and ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... was but a skirmish. The date of the beginning of the real contest was Sept. 12, 1786, when, it was voted "to build a new meeting-house in the centre of the town, or in the nearest convenient place to the centre." It was ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... The question of our allies then coming up, I stated my reasons for regarding Prof. Tiele 'rather as an ally than an adversary,' the reason being his own statement. Presently, I replied to Prof. Tiele's criticism of my treatment of the myth of Cronos. After a skirmish on Italian fields, I gave my reasons for disagreeing with Mr. Max Muller's view of Mannhardt's position. His theory of Demeter Erinnys was contrasted with that of Mr. Max Muller. Totemism occupied us ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... Napoleon wished the troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops should form up on the farther side and wait. But before that order was given—almost as soon in fact as the adjutant had left Borodino—the bridge had been retaken by the Russians and burned, in the very skirmish at which Pierre had been present at the beginning ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... startling discovery that we had completely lost our way, and to add to our misfortune the small pocket-compass, which Frank had brought with him, and which would have now so greatly assisted us, was missing, most probably dropped from his pocket during the skirmish to get under shelter. We still wandered along till stopped by the shades of evening, which came upon us—there is little ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... struggle, was no better off than before, and in 1894 Jose Marti, at the head of a new insurrection, set sail from New York with three ships, men, and munitions of war. But the United States authorities stopped them. Marti then joined Gomez in Cuba and was killed in a skirmish. He was succeeded in command by General Gomez, who still fights on with a hungry, ill-clad handful of men against the best of Spain's army. One hundred and forty-five thousand men have been sent against him but he still fights; he still lives to fight, ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich

... steadily toward Fredericksburg. When they reached Hazel Run they found a considerable body of the enemy on the Bowling Green Road at the bridge in readiness to dispute the passage. Colonel Hamblin, who was in charge of Newton's skirmish line, left a few of his men to open an energetic fire in front, while he assembled the others and made a charge which took the bridge and secured the right of way. The command reached Fredericksburg about 3 A.M. As the atmosphere was very hazy, Newton found himself almost on the ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday

... expedition. All of them knew the white steed by fame; one or two averred they had seen him in their prairie wanderings. The whole party were delighted at the idea of such a "scout," and exhibited as much excitement as if I was leading them to a skirmish with guerilleros. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... 2d of June, when within three miles of Ridgeway, Col. Owen Starr in command of the advanced guard, came up with the advance of the enemy, mounted, and drove them some distance, till he got within sight of their skirmish line, which extended on both sides of the road about half a mile. By this time, O'Neill could hear the whistle of the railroad cars which brought the enemy from Port Colborne. He immediately advanced his skirmishers, and formed line ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... feels pleasure when the others, to enliven many an indifferent moment, point the arrows of their wit at him. If he is not merely a stuffed Saracen, like those on whom the knights used to practise their lances in mock battles, but understands himself how to skirmish, to rally, and to challenge, how to wound lightly, and recover himself again, and, while he seems to expose himself, to give others a thrust home, nothing more agreeable can be found. Such a man we possessed in our friend Horn, whose name, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... of May the battle or skirmish of Langside determined the result of the campaign in three-quarters of an hour. Kirkaldy of Grange, who commanded the Regent's cavalry, seized and kept the place of vantage from the beginning, and at the first sign of wavering on the other side shattered at a single charge the forces ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... the prisoners were passed below and secured; and we then had time to turn our attention to the other craft. Where was she? During the skirmish I had caught a momentary glimpse of her at about a cable's length on our port beam through the glancing of the pistol-flashes on her spars and rigging, but now she was nowhere ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... But the skirmish line being deployed out, extending a little wider than the battle did—passing through a thicket of small locusts, where Brown, orderly sergeant of Company B, was killed—we advanced on toward the breastworks, on and on. I had made ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... Behechio, entertained with various Indian games and festivities, among which the most remarkable was the representation of a battle. Two squadrons of naked Indians, armed with bows and arrows, sallied suddenly into the public square and began to skirmish in a manner similar to the Moorish play of canes, or tilting reeds. By degrees they became excited, and fought with such earnestness, that four were slain, and many wounded, which seemed to increase the interest and pleasure of the spectators. ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... Cape Maria found to be an island. Limmen's Bight. Coast northward to Cape Barrow: landing on it. Circumnavigation of Groote Eylandt. Specimens of native art at Chasm Island. Anchorage in North-west Bay, Groote Eylandt; with remarks and nautical observations. Blue-mud Bay. Skirmish with the natives. Cape Shield. Mount Grindall. Coast to Caledon Bay. Occurrences in that bay, with remarks on the country and inhabitants. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... boat, the free-traders forming up around her, and hustling the dragoons. It was old Solomon Tweedy's boat, and he, prudent man, had taken advantage of the skirmish to ease her off, so that a push would set her afloat. He asserts that as July came up to him she never uttered a word, but the look on her face said "Push me off," and though he was at that moment meditating his own escape, he obeyed and pushed the boat off ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... want of it which characterized the Egyptian. The Babylonians also were distinguished by the same quality, though perhaps to a less extent than their Assyrian neighbors, whose somewhat pedantic accuracy led them to state the exact numbers of the slain and captive in every small skirmish, and the name of every petty prince with whom they came into contact, and who had invented a system of accurately registering dates at a very early period. Nevertheless, the Babylonian was also a historian; the ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... until June, 1776, that Virginia raised a troop of horse. On the 18th of that month Harry was commissioned a cornet thereof. After some service he found himself, March 31, 1777, cornet in the First Continental Dragoons. The next fall, in a skirmish after the battle of Brandywine, he was recognized by British officers as the former ensign of the Sixty-third. In the following spring, thanks to his activity during the British occupation of Philadelphia, he was made captain-lieutenant in Harry Lee's battalion of light dragoons. ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... landlord replied. "Our trade is stopped here now. The rivers swarm with craft, manned, some by the beggars of the sea, and others by fishermen; and the Spanish ships cannot come up save in great force. We have two or three of their warships here which go out and skirmish with our men, and do not always get the ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... brother, and there was a skirmish between them, during which Miss Morley vainly exclaimed by turns, "Now Lionel!" and "Now Johnny!" It ended by John's beginning to cry, Lionel laughing at him, and declaring that he had done nothing to hurt him, and both walking ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... incidental manner is a general notion sometimes formed of the true object and tenor of a book, which is retained in the mind, stored for use, and capable of being refreshed and strengthened whenever it is wanted. In the skirmish for the Caxtons, which began the serious work in the great conflict of the Roxburghe sale, it was satisfactory to find, as I have already stated, on the authority of the great historian of the war, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... camp during the latter part of June; and almost immediately became aware that preparations were being made for an event of some importance. There was much scouting going on, although he and Dick took no part in it, much to their regret, and now and then there was a skirmish reported. The junction of Price's forces with those of Jackson and Rains, which Siegel hoped to prevent by a rapid march upon Neosho, took place at Carthage, as we have said; but in spite of this Siegel resolved to attack. He left Neosho on the 4th of July, ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon

... cap'n was shot down in a skirmish three days ago—back of Edmonton, and he's laying at the house of a friend ten miles ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic

... a position to furnish a more complete account of this skirmish, and of the action of April 26, in which my grandfather, General Mansel, fell, from a copy of the Evening Mail of May 14, 1794, now in the possession of J. C. Mansel, Esq., of Cosgrove Hall, Northamptonshire. Your correspondent MR. T. C. SMITH appears to have ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various

... invaded, but to no purpose, as the natives always defended themselves so valiantly, that their enemies could never subdue them. On the present occasion, mistaking the English for Spaniards, these brave and desperate Araucans gave Candish a hostile welcome. After this skirmish, Candish went with his ships under the lee of the west side of St Mary's island, where he found good anchorage in six fathoms. This island, in lat. 37 deg. S. abounds in hogs, poultry, and various kinds of fruit; but the inhabitants are held under such absolute slavery by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... healths to the king, council, and bishops; held orgies with the Laird of Lagg, Theophilus Oglethorpe, and Sir James Turner; and lastly, took his gray gelding, and joined Clavers at Killiecrankie. At the skirmish of Dunkeld, 1689, he was shot dead by a Cameronian with a silver button (being supposed to have proof from the Evil One against lead and steel), and his grave is still ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... into Westsaxon, and afterwards departing (upon occasion) is made bishop of Paris, Wini buieth the bishoprike of London; Sigibert king of the Eastangles, the vniuersitie of Cambridge founded by him, he resigneth his kingdome and becometh a moonke, he and his kinsman Egric are slaine in a skirmish against Penda ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed

... regards the men portion," said De Courcy, with a malicious smile; "but what became of the lady all this time, my conquering hero? Did you find her playing a very active part in the skirmish?" ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... better than a fishing village. There was a castle, and a ford to it across the Lagan. A chapel was built at the ford, at which hurried prayers were offered up for those who were about to cross the currents of Lagan Water. In 1575, Sir Henry Sydney writes to the Lords of the Council: "I was offered skirmish by MacNeill Bryan Ertaugh at my passage over the water at Belfast, which I caused to be answered, and passed over without losse of man or horse; yet by reason of the extraordinaire Retorne our horses swamme and the Footmen in the passage waded very deep." The country round about was forest ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... to bring on a decisive battle, if possible, before his short-term volunteers were discharged. Learning that the enemy was slowly advancing from the southwest by two or three different roads, Lyon moved out, August 1, on the Cassville road, had a skirmish with the enemy's advance-guard at Dug Springs the next day, and the day following (the 3d) again at Curran Post-office. The enemy showed no great force, and offered but slight resistance to our advance. It was evident ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... a mile to the rear. At the sight of this movement, the Afghans swarmed down a spur of the hill, and commenced an attack on the regiments that were moving towards the village. The 29th Punjaubees climbed the hill and a sharp skirmish ensued, the two mounted guns ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... if there was an outsider present, there was sure to be a skirmish. Such a life must have been wearisome, and of course she must have longed for a home of her own. Besides, there was her age to be considered; there was no time left to pick and choose; it was a case of marrying anybody, even a Greek master. ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... now, don't sit there and swing yo' hat under that chyar, but rouse out and come along with me to the pawty if you can shake a foot, and show Miss Pinkney and the gyrls yo' fit for something mo' than to skirmish round as a black japanned spittoon for Julia Jeffcourt!" It is not recorded that Corbin accepted this cheerful invitation, but for a few days afterwards he was more darkly observant of, and respectful to, Miss Sally. Strange indeed if he had not noticed—although ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... bad to worse. The households of the wits concerned were up in arms; neighbourhood and police began to assert themselves. One night the trembling Dora waited hour after hour for her father. About midnight he staggered in, maddened with drink and fresh from a skirmish with the police. Finding her there waiting for him, pale and silent, he did what he had never done before under any stress of trouble—struck and swore at her. Dora sank down with a groan, and in another minute ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to Narbonne had been tedious, and, because of the bitter winter cold, full of hardship, but we had not met with opposition. Now we were launched straight into the midst of a hostile district filled with the king's troops, and few days passed without some skirmish, in which, though petty enough, we could ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx

... life in it, you used to bestir yourself against crime and violence; there were no armistices in those days; the thunderbolt was always hard at it, the aegis quivering, the thunder rattling, the lightning engaged in a perpetual skirmish. Earth was shaken like a sieve, buried in snow, bombarded with hail. It rained cats and dogs (if you will pardon my familiarity), and every shower was a waterspout. Why, in Deucalion's time, hey presto, everything was swamped, mankind ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... satisfy the officer, and after taking the names of the party he marched his men on toward the scene of the skirmish to bring back the dead men for ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... mutually extinguishing one another; a result that, we were certain, could not fail to be brought about, owing to the deadly nature of the weapons with which each was provided. Both the bores, I may observe, shot execrably during the day. In the evening, after a short preliminary skirmish, from which SHABRACK the hussar extricated us with but little loss, that which we desired came to pass. It was a terrible spectacle. In a moment both these magnificent animals, their bristles erect, and all their tusks flashing fiercely in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various

... features so characteristic of the City of the Doges. There is no questioning what these Istrian coast-towns were or are. They are as Italian to-day as when, a thousand years ago, they formed a part of Venice's far-flung skirmish line. But penetrate even a single mile into the interior of the peninsula and you find a wholly different race from these Latins of the littoral, a different architecture (if architecture can be applied to square ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... apart for him in the convent, Harold found Haco and Wolnoth already awaiting him; and a wound he had received in the last skirmish against the Bretons, having broken out afresh on the road, allowed him an excuse to spend the rest of the evening alone with ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... hour later, the rafters of the ranch having by this time tumbled in and turned the interior into a glowing furnace, there came riding from the west a slender skirmish line of horsemen in the worn campaign dress of the regular cavalry. With the advance there were not more than six or eight, a tall, slender lieutenant leading them on and signalling his instructions. With carbines ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... descent: for the family of Lord Egmont, the head of all Percivals, ever was, and ever will be, in Somersetshire. But how was he killed? The time when, viz. 1303, the place where, are known: but the manner how, is not exactly stated; it was in skirmish with rascally Irish 'kernes,' fellows that (when presented at the font of Christ for baptism) had their right arms covered up from the baptismal waters, in order that, still remaining consecrated to the devil, those arms might inflict a devilish blow. Such a blow, with such an unbaptized arm, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... temporary misunderstanding with a man of rare ability, candour, and wit, for whom I entertained a great liking and no less respect. I rejoice to think now of the (then) Bishop's cordial hail the first time we met after our little skirmish, "Well, is it to be peace or war?" I replied, "A little of both." But there was only peace when we ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... passed that portal we shall have reached perfect peace. Let us find a spiteful satisfaction in the fact that long after we have entered the silent gates, the young roosters will still have to rise early and crow hungrily for corn, still will have to skirmish with other roosters for bread, and the highest pole in the roost, and that as they show up in the race of life, they will have to read, in their turn, the fatal sign-board along ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley

... from his castle to visit his mistress; his imagination conjured up a war between the opposing towers of Cadurcis and Cherbury; and when his mother fell into a passion on his return, it passed with him only, according to its length and spirit, as a brisk skirmish or a general engagement. ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... opening skirmish in the railroad regulation controversy. Incidentally it had come out in the open squarely for the Wright bill. From that moment the machine Senators labored openly for the passage of the measure. However, the machine was not yet out of the woods ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... distance, and attend my state.— Parent to her, whose eyes my soul enthral, [To ABEN. Whom I, in hope, already father call, Abenamar, thy youth these sports has known, Of which thy age is now spectator grown; Judge-like thou sit'st, to praise, or to arraign The flying skirmish of the darted cane: But, when fierce bulls run loose upon the place, And our bold Moors their loves with danger grace, Then heat new-bends thy slacken'd nerves again, And a short youth runs warm through ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... a mournful farewell of the beloved heroes of that mighty epoch. Every name connected with it thrilled his memory: Saarbruecken, a skirmish still scarcely imbued with the gravity of war, and assuming rather the character of playful bantering provocation; Weissenburgh and Woerth, where Bavarians and North Germans met as comrades in arms; Spicheren, where ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... between six and seven thousand warriors, extending up and down the river for a distance of six miles. There was nothing for the Spaniards to do but to press forward. To turn back, in sight of their foes, was not to be thought of. After a pretty sharp skirmish, in which the Spaniards attacked their opponents, the natives sprang into their canoes, and some by swimming crossed the river and joined the main body of the Indians ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... be quoted as a case in point by those who would explain all poetical imagination by the power of associating ideas. He is the poet of association. A proper name acts upon him like a charm. It calls up the past days, the heroes of the '41, or the skirmish of Drumclog, or the old Covenanting times, by a spontaneous and inexplicable magic. When the barest natural object is taken into his imagination, all manner of past fancies and legends crystallise around ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... back from one company of guards to another, being made to work for the enemy on his way. Private Donahue was one who was sent back in this manner, after being captured in a midnight skirmish near Chateau-Thierry. ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... reply. It was clearly impossible to assert that he wanted to fight for liberty, to give his life to the cause of an oppressed nationality. It would be utterly absurd to tell the story of his father's vision, and say that he looked on the South African War as a skirmish preliminary to the Armageddon. Sitting opposite to this cynical man of the world and listening to his talk, Hyacinth came himself to disbelieve in principle. He felt that there must be some baser motive at the bottom of his desire to fight, only, for the life of him, he ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... on Saturdays, my father allers throws a skirmish line of niggers across the road, with orders to capture my grandfather as he comes romancin' along. An' them faithful servitors never fails. They swarms down on my grandfather, searches him out of the saddle an' packs him exultin'ly ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... side Tarzan struggled to his feet, the spear still protruding from his shoulder. The girl rose too, and as Tarzan wrenched the weapon from his flesh and stepped out from behind the concealment of their refuge, she followed at his side. The skirmish that had resulted in their rescue was soon over. Most of the lions escaped but all of the pursuing Xujans had been slain. As Tarzan and the girl came into full view of the group, a British Tommy leveled ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... greater folly these sought to impose upon the Celts by haughty language, and, when this failed, they conceived that they might with impunity violate the law of nations in dealing with barbarians; in the ranks of the Clusines they took part in a skirmish, and in the course of it one of them stabbed and dismounted a Gallic officer. The barbarians acted in this case with moderation and prudence. They sent in the first instance to the Roman community to demand ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... fixed all his mental powers on one thing. It seemed scarcely natural that an untaught vagabond lad should know so much and reason so clearly. It was at least extraordinarily interesting. There had been no skirmish, no attack, no battle which he had not led and fought in his own imagination, and he had made scores of rough queer plans of all that had been or should have been done. Lazarus listened as attentively as his master, and once Marco saw him ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... very fond of her. The little American had a most lovable side for certain people, on whom she bestowed the warmth of her affection, though she could be a pixie to those who did not happen to please her. With the seniors in general she was no favourite. She had more than one skirmish with the prefects, and was commonly regarded as a firebrand, ready at any moment to set alight the flame of insurrection among ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... their sovereign, and claimed the protection of the King of France, Philip II., surnamed Augustus; but he despairing of being able to retain these provinces against the will of their inhabitants, sacrificed Arthur and his followers to John, who in a skirmish with some of the Norman Lords, carried them all prisoners into Normandy, where Arthur soon disappeared: the Britons assert that he was murdered by his uncle; and the Normans that he was accidentally killed in endeavouring to escape. The death of their favourite ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various

... not been pleasant at the best. As a dependent upon the bounty of such a woman it would be worse. He resolved to leave home and strike out for himself, not from any such foolish idea of independence as sometimes leads boys to desert a good home for an uncertain skirmish with the world, but simply be cause he felt now that he had ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger

... hinderance: he could not control the instruments and operators in town, only three miles away. He almost wished he had been knocked down, shot, or stabbed in the melee; but he had kept in the rear when the skirmish began, and Rayner and the corporal were the sufferers. They had been knocked "endwise" by Mr. Hurley's practised fists after Hayne was struck down by the corporal's musket. It was the universal ...
— The Deserter • Charles King

... the actual outbreak was a haphazard affair. Alarmed by the sudden and seemingly concerted departure of Papineau and some of his lieutenants, Nelson, Brown, and O'Callaghan, from Montreal, the Government gave orders for their arrest. The petty skirmish that followed on November 16, 1837, was the signal for the rallying of armed habitants around impromptu leaders at various points. The rising was local and spasmodic. The vast body of the habitants stood aloof. The Catholic Church, ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... accumulated by the disaffected colonists in Concord. Warning of his plan was carried at night by a patriotic engraver named Paul Revere to every hamlet within reach of a horse's ride. There was a skirmish at Lexington on the road to Concord between the King's troops and a body of minute-men, which resulted in the killing and wounding of many of the latter and the dispersal of their force. An expedition that began with what might in irony be termed a victory for the British arms ended in a disaster ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... Russian army, their weapons flashing to the sinking sun. The hum of multitudes of men, the neighing of horses, the discordant clamours of a camp, filled the air. Advancing, Kosciuszko with his little troop had a skirmish with the Cossacks. The general and Niemcewicz were twice surrounded, and narrowly escaped with their lives. Then with the evening the Polish army came up, and ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... of Forsyth's close by. On enquiry, we learned these fellows had threatened to rob her shop. We had been such defenders of the sex, that we could not think of deserting this woman, and we swore we would stand by her, too. We should have had a skirmish here, I do believe, had not one or two rifle officers hove in sight, when the whole party made sail from us. We turned the woman over to these gentlemen, who said, "ay, there are some of our vagabonds, again." One of them said it would be better ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... so many lovers that she herself could not tell who was the father of her child; but the lumps of gold had a language of their own. The disbanded army espoused the young priest's cause; there was a skirmish, Macrin was killed, and Heliogabalus was ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... is now known that the battle was only a skirmish. The Spaniards attacked our men in order to seize upon their extra linen. They were ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... Mr. Chaffanbrass had not done much; but that was only the preliminary skirmish, as fencers play with their foils ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... the house, there was a hollow in the earth, a scar from some long-forgotten skirmish. Over the years, rain and wind had worked on it, softening its once harsh outlines. Grass had grown in, to further mask the crater, till now it was a mere smooth depression in the ground. From the edge of this depression, rose the slender rod of a speaker, a small, directional loud-speaker ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole

... by a skirmish with the clergy. They observed the significant omission of a State church in the Declaration of Rights, and feared that they would be despoiled and the Church disestablished. The enthusiasm of the first hour had cooled. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... a gigantic offspring of a military tank, sans heavy armament. But even a small stinger was part of the patrol car equipment. As for armament, Beulah had weapons to meet every conceivable skirmish in the deadly battle to keep Continental Thruways fast-moving and safe. Her own two-hundred-fifty-ton bulk could reach speeds of close to six hundred miles an hour utilizing one or both of her two independent ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael

... long skirmish and a drink, retired homewards towards sunset, when suddenly, from a tuft of grass ahead of him, a shadow shot and vanished. He picked up the trail at once, diagnosed it as that of a hare, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... of the twentieth of July the Army of the North was encamped about seven miles from Beaureguard's lines at Bull Run. The volunteers were singing, shouting, girding their loins for the fray. They had heard the firing on the first skirmish line. Fifteen or twenty men had been killed it ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... as Edwin would be exasperated because Maggie's attitude towards argument was that of a woman, so would Maggie resent a certain mulishness in him characteristic of the unfathomable stupid sex. Once a week, for example, when his room was 'done out,' there was invariably a skirmish between them, because Edwin really did hate anybody to 'meddle among his things.' The derangement of even a brush on the dressing-table would rankle in his mind. Also he was very 'crotchety about his meals,' and on the subject of fresh air. Unless ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... what the President thought, What Stanton did or Seward taught, In columns long, With capitals strong; And the paper is filled As the editor willed: 'SLIGHT SKIRMISH!—one man killed.' But men must fight for the sleeping Right, And ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... they certainly appeared hostile. In the sharp fight which followed, Jumonville and nine others were killed, while of the remaining twenty-three only one escaped. By the English, the affair was described as a successful skirmish, by the French as the "Assassinat de Jumonville"; for all it meant precipitation of the death-struggle for ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... belonging to Sage. This was done under a heavy rifle fire, but so far as ever known no Indians were hurt. They left two of their ponies down on the river bank, which probably had been disabled. The Mexicans sustained no loss. After the skirmish was ended a few well directed shots dispersed the party that had remained on the hill; and one Indian, not exceeding 800 yards away, who seemed to be acting as a signal man, was directly fired at—the rifleman resting his piece on a wagon tongue; so far ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... lieutenant, he had begun to suspect the error of his ways—a brutal sixty miles' journey it was, that left his hips and legs one mass of raw soreness and soldered all his bones together. A week later, after his first skirmish against the rebels, he understood every rule of the game. Luis Cervantes would have taken up a crucifix and solemnly sworn that as soon as the soldiers, gun in hand, stood ready to shoot, some profoundly eloquent voice had spoken behind them, saying, "Run for your lives." It was ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela

... in unison with the battle clamors, and shrieked and wailed and roared as it surged adown the defiles. Now and then there came on the blast the fusillade of dropping shots from the south, where the skirmish line of one faction engaged the rear-guard of the other, or the pickets fell within rifle-range. Once the sullen, melancholy boom of distant cannon shook the clouds, and then was still, and ever and again sounded that tireless ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... who kept it and brought it down to the earth. Its name, Lavasii, became a title of chief ruler, and that title has remained in that particular family to this day. One of the Samoans killed in 1876 in a skirmish with the marines of H.M.S. Barracoutta had at that ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... war breaks out in earnest. No matther how manny is kilt, annything that happens befure th' war expert gets to wurruk is on'y what we might call a prelimin'ry skirmish. He sets down an' bites th' end iv his pencil an' looks acrost th' sthreet an' watches a man paintin' a sign. Whin th' man gets through he goes to th' window an' waits to see whether th' polisman that wint into th' saloon is afther a dhrink or sarvin' a warrant. If he ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne

... at once a stranger of reverend aspect and stately form, with white beard flowing on his bosom, appeared among them and took command with an air of authority which none could gainsay. He bade them charge on the screeching rabble, and after a short sharp skirmish the tawny foe was put to flight. When the pursuers came together again, after the excitement of the rout, their deliverer was not to be found. In their wonder, as they knew not whence he came or whither he had gone, many were heard ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... hope of deliverance from Ashantee rule. He should have waited for the trained troops of Major Chisholm. This was his fatal mistake. His pickets felt the enemy early in the morning of the 21st of January, 1824. A lively skirmish followed. In a short time the clamorous war-horns of the advancing Ashantees were heard, and a general engagement came on. The first fighting began along a shallow stream. The Ashantees came up with the courage and measured tread of a well-disciplined army. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... to throw oil upon the waters. However, his influence did not heal up the difference, and in about a fortnight, a few days before the intended race, there occurred during our afternoon boat-practice a little row between the two antagonists, which proved a final skirmish before the severe but ludicrous battle which ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... against the Normans, an old man of over fourscore years; and of his gallant son, Prince Rhys, who, after wrenching his patrimony from the invaders, died of a broken heart a few months after his wife, the Princess Gwenllian, had fallen in a skirmish at Kidwelly. No doubt he heard, though he makes but sparing allusion to them, of the loves and adventures of his grandmother, the Princess Nesta, the daughter and sister of a prince, the wife of an adventurer, the concubine ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... an eminence from which I obtained a good view. Major Jones told me to say that he would skirmish with the advance, delay it, and send word from time ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... two years Wessex had a respite. But at the end of 870 the storm burst; and the year which followed has been rightly called "Alfred's year of battles.'' Nine general engagements were fought with varying fortunes, though the place and date of two of them have not been recorded. A successful skirmish at Englefield, Berks (December 31, 870), was followed by a severe defeat at Reading (January 4, 871), and this, four days later, by the brilliant victory of Ashdown, near Compton Beauchamp in Shrivenham Hundred. On the 22nd of January the English were again defeated ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... for, as a matter of fact, that sword was used in that fashion by me, and I saw in my sleep the death of its owner, who perished in a brisk skirmish, which I have been unable to identify, but which occurred at the time of the wars of the Frondists. If you think of it, some of our popular observances show that the fact has already been recognized by our ancestors, ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Hereford. "Now I have a proposition: not a week passes but my retainers are in skirmish with those wildcats, the Welsh. Let the boy go and serve under my son, Lord Walter. He will put him in the way of earning ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... Skeleton skeleto. Sketch skizi. Sketch skizo. Skewer trapikileto. Skid malakcelo. Skiff boateto. Skilful lerta. Skill lerteco. Skilled lerta. Skim sensxauxmigi. Skimmer sxauxmkulero. Skin hauxto. Skin (animal) felo. Skin senfeligi. Skinner felisto. Skip salteti. Skirmish bataleto. Skirt jupo. Skittles kegloj. Skulk kasxigxi. [Error in book: kasigxi] Skull kranio. Sky cxielo. Skylight fenestreto. Slack malstrecxa. Slacken (speed) malakceli. Slacken (loose) malstrecxi. Slag metala sxauxmo. Slake sensoifigi. Slander kalumnii. Slang ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... command at Fortress Monroe, and was faced by Colonel Magruder, who held the peninsula between the York and the James rivers. Early in June the lieutenants of these two commanders performed the comical fiasco of the "battle" of Big Bethel. In this skirmish the Federal regiments fired into each other, and then retreated, while the Confederates withdrew; but in language of absurd extravagance the Confederate colonel reported that he had won a great victory, and Northern ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... the Indians, I was told some stories of Cody's exploits against the Indians. In former days, emigrants traversing these great prairies to found a home in this Wild West, were often harassed by Indians, and the soldiers at the fort had to protect them. Buffalo Bill has been in many a skirmish, and, if rumour is true, many redskins have succumbed to him; the Government took counsel with him in all Indian difficulties in that part of the country, and the day before I passed his ranch he had been sent for by the authorities that they might confer with him as to the outbreak which then ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett

... Hurlbut's train. The rebel cavalry, seeing the road clear of troops, and these wagons passing, struck them in flank, shot down the mules of three or four wagons, broke the column, and began a general skirmish. The escort defended their wagons as well as they could, and thus diverted their attention; otherwise I would surely have been captured. In a short time the head of McPherson's column came up, went into camp, and we ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... point we had a lively skirmish with robbers, during which I earned a reputation for courage by calling for my supper in the midst of the excitement. Meccah lies in a winding valley, and is not to be seen until the pilgrim is close ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... Public Celebration of the New Flag's Advent, under the Auspices of the Local School-teachers and their Pupils The Plaza of San German on Market-day Lower Quarter of Mayaguez A Mid-section of the Calle Mendez-Vigo, Mayaguez Positions occupied by Spanish Soldiers in the Skirmish at Hormigueros Railroad from Mayaguez to Aguadilla The Theatre, Mayaguez Custom-house at Mayaguez occupied by General Schwan as Brigade Headquarters Road from Mayaguez to Anasco Lower End of the Calle de Mendez-Vigo, Mayaguez Guenar Bridge, Mayaguez Upper End of the ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman

... some remark to him, and he would reply. At times the remarks between the two spun out into a verbal skirmish. Eleanore teased, and he was gruff; or he mocked, and Eleanore delivered a curtain lecture. Gertrude would sit with an expression of helpless amazement on her face, and look at the window. She purposely remained unoccupied; she purposely postponed her household duties. The thought of leaving ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... Tudor mansion. The latter had been tenanted until the dawn of this century, but was since then fallen into decay. The farm lands stretched beneath the crown of Cranbrook, hard by the historic "Bloody Meadow," a spot assigned to that skirmish between Royalist and Parliamentary forces during 1642 which cost brilliant young Sidney Godolphin his life. Here, or near at hand, the young man probably fell, with a musket-bullet in his leg, and subsequently expired at Chagford[1] leaving the "misfortune ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... of such great battles as the King of Prussia's, or the famous victories won by Marlborough over the French, this affair of Plassy may seem to be but a trifling skirmish, yet the country whose fate was decided upon that field, namely the Subahdarship of Bengal, Orissa, and Behar, is equal in magnitude to the whole of King Frederic's dominions. In fact the blow struck ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... delightful girl was a verbal skirmisher! Now nothing is more to my liking than the verbal skirmish, and therefore I began one immediately. "I see you quite know," was the first light shot that ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... humble citizen, malice had a handy weapon. But most of all was Mayo concerned with the view Alma Marston would take of the situation. She would either believe that he had fallen overboard in the skirmish with the attacking Polly or had deserted without warning—and in the case of a lover both suppositions were agonizing. His distress was so apparent that the girl, from her seat on the opposite transom, extended sympathy in the glances she dared to ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... clashes of the skirmish lines and bodies seeking positions, no fierce engagement took place until 2 P.M., when a determined attack in force fell on Terrill's brigade, causing it to soon give way, General James S. Jackson, division commander, being killed at the first fire, and Terrill fell soon after. McCook had previously ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... was instantly shot. His name proved to be Bailie Peyton, son of one of the most prominent Union men in Tennessee. Gen. Zollicoffer, commander of the Confederate forces, was also killed in this battle. This battle, although a mere skirmish when compared to many other engagements in which the Second participated before the close of the war, was watched with great interest by the people of St. Paul. Two full companies had been recruited ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore

... is wild with tangling underwood, And the trim walks are broken up, and grass, Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths. But never elsewhere in one place I knew So many Nightingales: and far and near In wood and thicket over the wide grove They answer and provoke each other's songs— With skirmish and capricious passagings, And murmurs musical and swift jug jug And one low piping sound more sweet than all— Stirring the air with such an harmony, That should you close your eyes, you might almost Forget it was ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... being presented to Lord Ruthven, the earl told him he must now salute him as Lord Badenoch, his brother having been killed a few days before in a skirmish on the skirts of Ettrick Forest. Ruthven then turned to welcome the entrance of Bruce, who, raising his visor, received from the loyal chief the homage due to his sovereign dignity. Wallace and the prince soon engaged him in a discourse ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... had been mortally wounded in a skirmish at Chalgrove Field, Oxfordshire. His death was a terrible blow to the parliamentary army fighting in behalf of the ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... languages, he should have studied the beauties of his mother tongue, which, like all other speeches, is to be cultivated early, or we shall never write it with any kind of elegance. Thus by gaining abroad he lost at home, like the painter in the "Arcadia," who, going to see a skirmish, had his arms lopped off, and returned, says Sir Philip Sidney, well instructed how to draw a battle, but without a hand to perform ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... reason for Charles to be heartsick at the sight than for John Paston, and he did grow weary of the further waiting and anxious, for his truce with Louis was drawing to a close. On May 22d, there was a skirmish between his troops and the imperial forces, wherein Charles claimed the victory. In reality, there was none on either side, but the semblance was sufficient to soothe his amour propre, and to convince him that an accommodation ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... They may be able to stir up the new crop of rebels into doing something desperate. Raw guerillas, with a leaven of hard-bitten cases, are always a source of danger. But I think that we worked our own salvation in the skirmish this morning. They would hardly believe that we should have such a small force with so many guns. No; our luck was in to-day, when they discovered us instead of Twine's squadron. We shall make something out ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... themselves into a party, received rifles, and were exceedingly useful. By the 4th of the month, General Mooers collected about 700 militia, and advanced seven miles on the Beekmantown road, to watch the motions of the enemy, and to skirmish with him as he advanced; also to obstruct the roads with fallen trees, and to ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... the coast without resistance, the number of his ships, both armies incounter, why Caesar forbad the Romans to pursue the discomfited Britains, he repaireth his nauie, the Britains choose Cassibellane their cheefe gouernour, and skirmish afresh with their enimies, but haue the repulse in ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (3 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed

... days of feudalism, when chivalry was in its very beginnings, before the cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary added the grace of courtesy to its heroism. Evidently Roland had grown in importance before the "Chanson de Roland" took its present form, for we find the rearguard skirmish magnified into a great battle, which manifestly contains recollections of later Saracen invasions and Gascon revolts. As befits the hero of an epic, Roland is now of royal blood, the nephew of the great emperor, who has himself ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... fell back, so as to retard the enemy's movements until he could be reinforced by Thomas himself. As soon as Schofield saw this movement of Hood's, he sent his trains to the rear, but did not fall back himself until the 21st, and then only to Columbia. At Columbia there was a slight skirmish but no battle. From this place Schofield then retreated to Franklin. He had sent his wagons in advance, and Stanley had gone with them with two divisions to protect them. Cheatham's corps of Hood's army pursued the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... at Peshawur, and sent it home to me just as he was starting on one of those little frontier wars the accounts of which they keep out of the English papers. And he was killed, poor dear old boy, in some footy little skirmish. And this is all I've got ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... seemed less important. She preferred that her part in the cotillion should be observed by a frieze of unculled wall-flowers. A drive was always pleasanter if it were preceded by a skirmish with her mother in which Miss Knowles should come off victorious with the victoria, while Mrs. Knowles accepted the coup de grace and the coupe. A flirtation—if her languid, seeming innocent monopoly of a man's ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... Noir entered the city of Mexico with the victorious army, but on the subsequent day, being engaged in a street skirmish with the leperos, or liberated convicts, he fell mortally wounded by a copper bullet, and he was now dying by inches at his quarters near the ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... confident of their strength, refused to listen, and began to discharge their culverins and a few arrows. The captain, seeing that they would not listen to reason, ordered them to be fired upon. The skirmish lasted in one place or the other about three hours, since the Spaniards could not assault or enter the fort because of the moat of water surrounding it. But, as fortune would have it, the natives had left on the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair

... personal story. He went, by the queen's permission, with his uncle Leicester to the Low Countries, then struggling, with Elizabeth's assistance, against Philip of Spain. There he was made governor of Flushing—the key to the navigation of the North Seas—with the rank of general of horse. In a skirmish near Zutphen (South Fen) he served as a volunteer; and, as he was going into action fully armed, seeing his old friend Sir William Pelham without cuishes upon his thighs, prompted by mistaken but chivalrous generosity, he took ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... indulging a childish skirmish of wits; but controlled as his face was, I could see the relief that overspread it at my admission. "My name is Starling. I have a packet for you, monsieur," and he handed me ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... way, Harry," he said suddenly, as the defile, deep-sunken between towering rock, loomed darkly into view, "I've got a word of encouragement for you before we part company. You did an uncommonly gallant bit of work in that skirmish yesterday. The Colonel spoke of it; and congratulated me on having the smartest subaltern in the regiment. Of course I've known it myself this long while; and I don't think it will hurt ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... to the house at noon, had given, in answer to Rutherford's eager inquiries, an account of the "skirmish" as he called it. Rutherford was so proud of his friend, and of the victory he had won, that at the first opportunity, he told the story to Miss Gladden, before Houston had even returned to the office. Miss Gladden was enthusiastic ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... of the Philippine Islands that this "Prince of Navigators" lost his life in a skirmish with the natives. He was, as usual, in the thickest of the fight, and while trying to shield one of his men was struck down by the spear ...
— Discoverers and Explorers • Edward R. Shaw

... houses. Seat Ward University, 1300 students; also Garrison County High School, also Business College. Thirty-five churches, two newspapers, the Daily Banner and the Index; fifty miles of paved streets; largest stone arch bridge in the West, marking site of Battle of Sycamore Ridge, a border ruffian skirmish; home of Watts McHurdie, famous as writer of war-songs, best known of ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... upon the hills the bush was thicker than ever, and here, where it was impossible for the white soldiers to skirmish through the bush, the Ashantis made a last desperate stand. The narrow lane up which alone the troops could pass was torn as if by hail with the shower of slugs, while a large tree which stood nearly in the center of the ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... penetrating in speech and counsel, vigorous in fulfilment and actual work, earnest, nay, hard, in address. He had a firm, strong will, and at the same time was filled with noble, self-sacrificing endeavour. He never shirked skirmish nor battle in the cause of what he deemed the better part; he carried his pen into action, as a soldier carries his sword, for the true, the good, and the right. I saw that my father was growing old ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... command from Colonel Anderson—the boys recognized his voice—and more troops moved forward. As far as the eye could see dense masses of men were marching rapidly toward the front. It became apparent that this was to be no mere skirmish—no mere feeling-out process. It was to be a battle, and as both lads realized, it might well ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes

... Stukely, however, was not one of these. Her heart sank sometimes when she heard the talk of her bold husband and warlike sons. They had all three of them fought for the king at the first battle, or rather skirmish, at St. Albans four years before, and were ardent followers and adherents of the Red Rose of Lancaster. Her husband had received knighthood at the monarch's hands on the eve of the battle, and was prepared to lay down his life in the cause ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... own bodies. Along the banks of the Little Missouri there were no outrages, for the Indians had been driven out of the country at the end of the seventies, and, save for occasional raids in the early eighties, had made little trouble; but at the edge of the Bad Lands there was a skirmish now and then, and in the winter of 1884 Schuyler Lebo, son of that odd Ulysses who had guided Roosevelt to the Big Horn Mountains, was shot in the leg by an Indian while he was hunting ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... indeed. Frank knew that by his gray uniform and short jacket. He had been perched in the thick top of a tall pine to pick off our men during the skirmish. It was he who had taken the bark from the tree near Captain Edney's head. It was he who had basely thought to assassinate those who were carrying away the wounded. And now, the advancing troops having passed him, he was ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... not annoyed with me at that instant: she simply never gave me a thought. The blow was a final one. My last hopes were shattered with a crash, just as a block of ice, thawed by the sunshine of spring, suddenly falls into tiny morsels. I was utterly defeated at the first skirmish, and, like the Prussians at Jena, lost everything at once in one day. No, she was not angry ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... resumed possession of the mind of General Drouet, ever haunted by compunctions for his disobedience to the formal orders of Napoleon. Ney was not in a position seriously to defend his positions against the English; after a brilliant skirmish, he fell back upon Redinha. His division of infantry had constantly fought under his orders in all the campaigns of the six previous years; it disputed the land, foot to foot, with the 25,000 English, who followed the French army, without letting ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... and quickly," cried George. "I know their ways; they will be back directly." And the old man pointed with his finger into the darkness. I listened, and heard distant howlings replying to the nearer ones. What we had as yet had was a mere skirmish. The general engagement was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... we all enjoyed your skirmish with her in November so much, we shall do our best to provoke another ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... from his lax views about religion; for at this time that old war of the creeds and confessors, which is always grumbling from end to end of our poor Scotland, brisked up in these parts into a hot and virulent skirmish; and Burns found himself identified with the opposition party, - a clique of roaring lawyers and half-heretical divines, with wit enough to appreciate the value of the poet's help, and not sufficient taste to moderate his ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... General Wayne. His whole corps did not exceed 800, part of which were militia, with three field pieces.—But at sight of the British, the troops ran to the rencontre, notwithstanding the very superior number of the enemy, and a short skirmish ensued, with a warm, close and well directed fire. But, as both the right and left of the enemy greatly out-flanked ours, I sent orders to General Wayne, to retire to about half a mile, where Col. Vose and Barber's ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... fortunate enough to find our land-lord, a worthy farmer, waiting for us with a tumble-down conveyance, in appearance something between a circus-chariot and a bath-chair, drawn by a couple of powerful-looking horses; and in this, after a spirited skirmish between our driver and a mob of twenty or so tourists, who pretended to mistake the affair for an omnibus, and who would have clambered into it and swamped it, we ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... form ourselves into a skirmish line. The shells come. The dirt flies: holes to bury an ox? One can see them coming: zzz—boom! There is time to get ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... than benefits." Few more words passed, and with another kiss the soldier scaled the wall and galloped away, the triple beat of his charger's hoofs sounding back into the maiden's ears like drum-taps. In a skirmish next day Colonel Howell was shot. He was carried to farmer Jarrett's house and left there, in spite of the old man's protest, for he was willing to give no shelter to his country's enemies. When Ruth saw her lover in this strait she was like to have fallen, but when she learned that ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... shot, and these foure hauing some wounds were dressed by the surgion of the shippe. One of them was the Corrigidor himselfe, who is gouernour of a hundred Townes and Cities in Spaine, his liuing by his office being better then sixe hundred pound yerely. This skirmish happened in the euening about sixe of the clocke, after they had laden twenty Tunne of goods and better out of the sayd ship: which goods were deliuered by two of the same ship, whose names were Iohn Burrell ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt

... the night-skirmish at Pisek, glorious to France, think all the Gazettes, I should have said nothing, were it not that Marechal Broglio, finding what a narrow miss he had made, established a night-watch there, or bivouac, for six ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... were the sole survivors of a train of emigrants, attacked and murdered by the Nez-Perces, who, actuated by one of those whims characteristic of the red men, spared the lives of the two children, and adopted them into the tribe. Subsequently, in a skirmish with the Blackfeet, they fell into the hands of the latter, among whom they had lived for some time, when they were ransomed by the missionaries, at the price of certain trading-privileges negotiated by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... adopted the arts of Egypt and the externals of her civilization; they sculptured rude figures on the rocks and engraved scenes on their stone vessels, in which they are represented fully armed,* and taking part in some skirmish or attack, or even a chase in the desert. The hunters are divided into two groups, each of which is preceded by a different ensign—that of the West for the right wing of the troop, and that of the East for the left wing. They carry the spear the boomerang, the club, the double-curved bow, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... succession of small contests, for the sake of finding out who is boss builds up a habit of fighting that may lead to a bitter end. It is useless to discover who can win in any particular skirmish. What is important is to learn whether one of you is set on being "head of the house." If your spouse craves that distinction, by all means hand it over without delay. It is an empty honor, for the one who bends but does not break will readily develop the fine art of influencing ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... promote your deserving men, but do not be afraid to hire a keen outsider; he helps everybody, even the kickers, for if you disintegrate and go down in defeat, the kickers will have to skirmish around for new jobs anyway. Isn't ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... eighty-two to eight was an unpleasant disparity of numbers. The lieutenant and his men arrived back at the river the next morning, having been in the saddle nearly twenty-four hours. The result of the short skirmish was that one of the cavalrymen's horses was shot through the breast, and one Navajo was sent to his happy hunting-grounds and ...
— Frontier service during the rebellion - or, A history of Company K, First Infantry, California Volunteers • George H. Pettis

... to fill the gap in the line—Hill followed Longstreet—and then the world beheld the singular spectacle of an army extended in a long skirmish line over a hundred miles, with another army massed not daring ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... of the short marches and frequent halts of the Seventh? Remember, gentle reader, that you must be schooled by such alphabetical exercises to spell bigger words—skirmish, battle, defeat, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... fail. Fernando, you have lied, you have lied in every word; You have been honored by the Cid and favored and preferred. I know of all your tricks, and can tell them to your face: Do you remember in Valencia the skirmish and the chase? You asked leave of the Cid to make the first attack, You went to meet a Moor, but you soon came running back. I met the Moor and killed him, or he would have killed you; I gave you up his arms, and all that was my due. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... on now and tell of battles, copiously. In the memory of the one skirmish I have given I do but taste blood. I would like to go on, to a large, thick book. It would be an agreeable task. Since I am the chief inventor and practiser (so far) of Little Wars, there has fallen to me a disproportionate share of victories. But ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells

... on in silence, Save for rattling iron and steel, And a skirmish echoing round us, ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... a bright fellow too, and may have developed into a man of business, a reporter, or even an editor. "Another great battle!" was his constant cry. But the purchaser of his paper would commonly read of nothing but a skirmish or some fresh account of a battle fought several days before—perhaps not even this. On one occasion an officer in uniform, finding nothing in his paper to justify the cry, turned upon the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... attention, felt the suggestion of reserved power in every sentence she uttered, and burst forth, as she dropped into her seat, in a loud chorus of approving ejaculations. The Soulsbys had captured Octavius with their first outer skirmish line. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... appointed army aboard which he lacked, and, their ships standing higher than his own vessels, threatened nothing less than certain destruction to those fighting them from below. This was the most fierce and bloody skirmish of all, though it only resulted in the capture of one huge galleon and a few small craft by the English. There was a mutual cessation of hostilities for all the next day for the wind fell dead and each fleet was compelled to drift idly with ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... (1785), which started his career, it was from Benezet's writings that he obtained his information. By their influence the Pennsylvanian Quakers were gradually led to pronounce against slavery[123]; and the first anti-slavery society was founded in Philadelphia in 1775, the year in which the skirmish at Lexington began the war of independence. That suggests another influence. The Rationalists of the eighteenth century were never tired of praising the Quakers. The Quakers were, by their essential principles, in favour of absolute toleration, and their ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... am merely complimentary. Conversation is an art, Louisa. None of my sisters ever can be got to understand that. It is dreadfully crude to rush in waist-deep at once. There should be feints and approaches. You should nibble at your sugar with a graceful coyness. You should cut a few frills and skirmish a little before setting the battle actively in array. And it is just this that I have been striving to do during the last five minutes. But you do not appear to appreciate the commendable style of my preliminaries. You want to engage immediately. There is usually a first-rate ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... not last long, however. It seems that not even a single pitched battle was fought. Josiah was picked off by a Libyan archer in the very first skirmish and wounded mortally, to the dismay of ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman

... New Orleans they wanted in the line of guard and special duty. Four hours of hard drilling five mornings in each week, special duty in the afternoon, then half of every night fighting mosquitoes. May was very hot. I believe that the battalion and skirmish drills, without stopping to rest or to get water, were very injurious to ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman

... the force, including in it the three boy ranchers, to their great delight. For they rightly guessed this was to be a skirmish party, to sally out and see who were the attackers—perhaps to ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker

... widespread dissatisfaction and eventually led to the revolution. It was included among the grievances against which public protests were made in 1641. The five judges who pronounced in its favour were imprisoned, and Hampden received a wound in a skirmish with Prince Rupert, from which he died, June 24, 1643. Petitions were also presented to Sir Edward Hussey, sheriff, 1636-7, as given in Domestic State Papers, Charles I., Vol. 345, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... give them a clue on those bronzed features, as seen in the early light of the morning. The Indian was also listening and waiting till he could hear and learn more before saying anything. The firing lasted until it sounded as if a skirmish was going on close at hand. Could it be that a party of fugitive patriots was engaged in a fight with a lot of ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... heard every word. She bent her head over the tea-table and busied herself with the cups. But her hands shook; her face burned, she was tortured with shame. She had set herself to do battle with her father, and already in the first skirmish she had been defeated. Chayne's indiscreet words had laid bare to her the elaborate conspiracy. The new gardener, the gun in the corner, the cartridges which had to be looked for, Barstow's want of skill, Hine's superiority which had led Barstow so ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason

... there was a large Spanish force; further to the west, General Henry had marched to within fifteen miles of Arecibo; in the extreme west, General Schwan had marched along the coast and taken Mayaguez, the principal port in that end of the island, after a sharp skirmish with a force that outnumbered his own. The slight opposition met by General Brooke at Guayama, General Wilson at Coamo, and General Schwan near Mayaguez, indicated that there would be little difficulty in reaching ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall

... another, and the battle was long. Mr. Wilcox had the advantage of position. He simply retreated into his library as into a fortified camp, intrenching himself behind a barricade of books, and refusing to skirmish with the enemy in the open. And to every assault made by his family he replied with a violent fit of coughing. A well-authenticated lung-disease is a formidable weapon ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... but a skirmish. The date of the beginning of the real contest was Sept. 12, 1786, when, it was voted "to build a new meeting-house in the centre of the town, or in the nearest convenient place to the centre." It was thus agreed ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... after noon, on the Eve of the Nativity of our Blessed Lady, we reached the gates of the town. Here we found great press of folk, men coming and going, some carrying the wounded, for there had been a skirmish that day, at one of the Paris gates, whence came the sound of cannon and culverins, and we had ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... George. Proposed Incursion of Levis. Perplexities of Montcalm. His Plan of Defence. Camp of Abercromby. His Character. Lord Howe, His Popularity. Embarkation of Abercromby. Advance down Lake George. Landing. Forest Skirmish. Death of Howe. Its Effects. Position of the French. The Lines of Ticonderoga. Blunders of Abercromby. The Assault. A Frightful Scene. Incidents of the Battle. British Repulse. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... plaintiff; and the defendant's ingenious plea struck off the record; and Hardie v. Hardie became the leading case. But in law one party often wins the skirmish and the other the battle. The grand fight, as I have already said, was to ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... willing as mine, And I sole leader of this array, I would give Prince Otto battle this day. Dost thou call thy followers men of war? Oh, Dagobert! thou whose ancestor On the neck of the Caesar's offspring trod, Who was justly surnamed "The Scourge of God". Yet in flight lies safety. Skirmish and run To forest and fastness, Teuton and Hun, From the banks of the Rhine to the Danube's shore, And back to the banks of the Rhine once more; Retreat from the face of an armed foe, Robbing garden and hen-roost where'er you go. Let the short alliance betwixt us cease, I and my Norsemen will go ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... Tradition, Mr. Human Wisdom, and Mr. Man's Invention.' They were allowed to join, and were placed in positions of trust, the captains of the covenant being apparently wanting in discernment. They were taken prisoners in the first skirmish, and immediately changed sides and went over to Diabolus. More battles follow. The roof of the Lord Mayor's house is beaten in. The law is not wholly ineffectual. Six of the Aldermen, the grosser moral sins—Swearing, Stand to Lies, Drunkenness, Cheating, and others—are ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... bear's carcass to the custody of our ancient and well-tried friend, the Anglo-Norwegian, who promised to preserve the skin for us till our return, (and who, by the way, was the first to meet us and thank his pagods for our safe issue out of the skirmish,) and having made a trifling present to our host, we packed up our pots and pans, and, seating ourselves in the gig, were again ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... tells us a romantic story of Wallace, founded on this circumstance. The hero's little band had been joined by an Irishman named Fawdon, or Fadzean, a dark, savage, and suspicious character. After a sharp skirmish at Black Erneside, Wallace was forced to retreat with only sixteen followers. The English pursued with a border sleuth-bratch, or bloodhound. In the retreat, Fawdon, tired, or affecting to be so, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... away, the southern outskirts of the great Indian metropolis that stretched away for miles to the north. God of battles! was this a position, was this a force to be assailed by one regiment? Why linger over it?—the half-hearted advance of the dismounted skirmish line; the hesitating rally; then the volley from the willows; the flanking warriors on the west; the sudden consciousness of their pitiful numbers as against the hordes now swarming upon them; the mad rush for the bluffs, with the yelling Indians ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... army lay at Plataea that news came which might have shaken Glaucon's purpose, had that purpose been shakable. Euboulus the Corinthian had been slain in a skirmish shortly after the forcing of Thermopylae. The tidings meant that no one lived who could tell in Athens that on the day of testing the outlaw had cast in his lot with Hellas. Leonidas was dead. The Spartan soldiers who ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... Saturdays, my father allers throws a skirmish line of niggers across the road, with orders to capture my grandfather as he comes romancin' along. An' them faithful servitors never fails. They swarms down on my grandfather, searches him out of the saddle an' packs him ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... of the command was to advance in marching column toward a knoll where the highway entered and traversed the wood. Some time before reaching it Taylor was to deploy the Eighth to the right, throw out a strong skirmish line and open fire on the enemy's centre and left, supported by the battery of Parrotts, and, if pushed, by five companies of cavalry. The remaining troops would reach the knoll, file to the left under cover of the forest, skirt it for a mile as rapidly as possible, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... have been well rubbed in some skirmish, may yet, all wounded and bloody as they are, be brought on again the next day to charge; but such as have once conceived a good sound fear of the enemy, will never be made so much as to look him in the face. Such as are in immediate fear of a losing ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... queen's permission, with his uncle Leicester to the Low Countries, then struggling, with Elizabeth's assistance, against Philip of Spain. There he was made governor of Flushing—the key to the navigation of the North Seas—with the rank of general of horse. In a skirmish near Zutphen (South Fen) he served as a volunteer; and, as he was going into action fully armed, seeing his old friend Sir William Pelham without cuishes upon his thighs, prompted by mistaken but chivalrous ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... and as far as the eye could reach lay on its shores the Russian army, their weapons flashing to the sinking sun. The hum of multitudes of men, the neighing of horses, the discordant clamours of a camp, filled the air. Advancing, Kosciuszko with his little troop had a skirmish with the Cossacks. The general and Niemcewicz were twice surrounded, and narrowly escaped with their lives. Then with the evening the Polish army ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... for their task. Of course, I spent most of my leisure at the old house, though my heart ached more there than elsewhere; and I tried, with but poor success, I fear, to maintain a cheerful, confident manner, cracking my little jokes as of old, and even essaying to skirmish with Miss Oman. But this last experiment was a dead failure; and when she had suddenly broken down in a stream of brilliant repartee to weep hysterically on my breast, I abandoned the attempt and did not ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... return to the bare pastures of the upland veldt. They carried out of Natal a heavy sense of injury, which has helped to poison our relations with them ever since. It was, in a way, a momentous episode, this little skirmish of soldiers and emigrants, for it was the heading off of the Boer from the sea and the confinement of his ambition to the land. Had it gone the other way, a new and possibly formidable flag would have been added to the ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... temperance pledge. It reads, 'We promise to abstain from all liquors—as a beverage.' We had found in many instances in reform work that pledging to abstain from liquor 'as a beverage,' and leaving the victim to the unlimited use of it in physicians' prescriptions, was simply a skirmish with the devil's outposts, that the conflict, based upon these grounds, was short, and defeat almost sure; and the great fact remained that the innermost recesses of evil force and power were by this pledge still left unassailed. ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... in the morning light, and crowned with smoke and fire, while the air hummed about our ears as if swarming with angry bees, and this one and that one fell, there was scarcely one who, as he pulled his cap close down and pushed ahead in the skirmish-line, was not thinking of duty. They were boys from farm and factory, not greatly better, to say the most, than their fellows anywhere; and we may be sure that thought of duty has always much to do with the going forward of weaponed men ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... December 1641 the king made him lieutenant of the Tower of London, but in consequence of the persistent demand of the House of Commons he was removed from this position at his own request early in 1642. At the opening of the Civil War Byron joined Charles at York. He was present at the skirmish at Powick Bridge; he commanded his own regiment of horse at Edgehill and at Roundway Down, where he was largely responsible for the royalist victory; and at the first battle of Newbury Falkland placed himself under his orders. In October 1643 he was created Baron Byron of Rochdale, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... purpose, as the natives always defended themselves so valiantly, that their enemies could never subdue them. On the present occasion, mistaking the English for Spaniards, these brave and desperate Araucans gave Candish a hostile welcome. After this skirmish, Candish went with his ships under the lee of the west side of St Mary's island, where he found good anchorage in six fathoms. This island, in lat. 37 deg. S. abounds in hogs, poultry, and various kinds of fruit; but the inhabitants are held under such ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... men-at-arms composing the Duke's guard, a disguise probably assumed to execute the fatal commission of the Secret Tribunal. It is supposed that a party of the traitor Campo-Basso's men had been engaged in the skirmish in which the Duke fell, for six or seven of them, and about the same number of the Duke's guards, were found near ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various

... will give me just the life I need to talk real business to Dave when he comes," she mused, punctuating her conjecture with a gasp or two as she fought against a gust of wind that forced her almost to a standstill. Winning this skirmish with the storm, she pressed forward again, when suddenly another gasp was forced from her by an entirely different cause. She almost stumbled over an object directly in her way, and as she recovered her equilibrium she ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis

... in our first skirmish. Keep it for the nucleus of what we hope to get later. If we put all to the test in our first fight against forces that have been in power for all the years and lose, then the cause gets a setback which may discourage ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... taken place. Half-way back near the poppy-patch, one glorious riot of red summer flowers, they met their regiment returning. They had done their work, the Turks had ceased attacking and the weary regiment which had been kept busy the long, hot days in this outpost skirmish had been relieved. The tired troopers trailed homewards, carelessly tramping the dewy wild poppy heads on their way. A bathe and a drink, and then a ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... extraordinary rapidity of his flight had put him considerably ahead of his pursuers. But he was not yet to escape. The cavalry of Horry, and the riflemen of M'Cottry, galled him at every step in flank and rear. When he reached Sampit bridge a last skirmish took place, which might have terminated in the complete defeat of the enemy, but for the cowardice of a Lieut. Scott, of Horry's detachment. Watson was attacked fiercely in the flank and rear by the whole force of Marion. His ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... the Wall, which Vernole would patiently put up, and pass on; so that he could never be provok'd to fight by Day-light, how solitary soever the Place was where they met: but if they chanc'd to meet at Night, they were certain of a Skirmish, in which he would have no part himself; so that Rinaldo was often like to be assassinated, but still came off with some slight Wound. This continu'd so long, and made so great a Noise in the Town, that the two old Gentlemen were mightily alarm'd by it; ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... a holiday licensed some riot and irregularity, a skirmish with these veterans was a favourite recreation with the rabble of Edinburgh. These pages may perhaps see the light when many have in fresh recollection such onsets as we allude to. But the venerable corps, with whom the contention was held, may now be considered as totally extinct. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... was shot down in a skirmish three days ago—back of Edmonton, and he's laying at the house of a friend ten miles ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic

... now Fort William. The governor of the fort detached a party of three hundred men to lay waste Lochiel's possessions and cut down his trees; by in a sudden and desperate attack made upon them by the chieftain with very inferior numbers, they were almost all cut to pieces. The skirmish is detailed in a curious memoir of Sir Ewan's life, printed in the Appendix of Pennant's Scottish Tour (vol. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... was that d'Artagnan had lost his letter in the skirmish. A gentleman, in his opinion—and according to d'Artagnan's portrait of him, the stranger must be a gentleman—would be incapable of the baseness of stealing ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... seized the Custom House boat at Dover and coolly employed her for their own purposes in running tea. The Custom officers deemed matters to be in such a state that they begged that a man-of-war might be stationed on that coast to prevent smuggling. Similarly in January of 1743-44, during a skirmish near Arundel between the preventive men assisted by some dragoons against a band of smugglers, the latter had wounded three of the soldiers and carried off an officer and two other dragoons on board the smugglers' cutter. This was no unique occurrence, for sometimes the contraband runners, ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton

... Indian prince, Pizarro now resumed his march. It was interrupted for a few hours by a party of the natives, who lay in wait for him in the neighboring sierra. A sharp skirmish ensued, in which the Indians behaved with great spirit, and inflicted some little injury on the Spaniards; but the latter, at length, shaking them off, made good their passage through the defile, and the enemy did not care to follow them into the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... a man of rare ability, candour, and wit, for whom I entertained a great liking and no less respect. I rejoice to think now of the (then) Bishop's cordial hail the first time we met after our little skirmish, "Well, is it to be peace or war?" I replied, "A little of both." But there was only peace when we parted, and ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... days past, some of the heaviest showers I remember to have seen, and in going to and from the ship, we have generally been wet through; nevertheless some of our friends ventured on board to-day to dine with us, among the rest Colonel and Mrs. Macgregor; they were a little late, owing to a skirmish between the Portuguese and Brazilians, that occurred close to their house, just as they were setting off. Apparently it had not been premeditated, for the parties were fighting with sticks and stones, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... knew also that it is the part of France to be the experimental ground in human progress, and that all new ideas need to be watered with her blood before they can come to flower. For his own part, he refused to take part in the skirmish. While the civilized nations were cutting each other's throats he was fain to repeat the device of Antigone: "I am made for love, and not for hate."—For love and for understanding, which is another form of love. His fondness for Christophe was enough to ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... of defense had been pushed out in a bulge at the northwest corner; the TV-screen pictured a crude breast-work of petrified tree-trunks, sandbags, mining machinery, packing-cases and odds-and-ends, upon which Wallingsby's native laborers were working under guard while a skirmish-line of Kragans had been thrown out another four or five hundred yards and were exchanging pot-shots with ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... as the object of his laughter." It may have been so, but it is not to be seen in any serious journal of that time. He seems to have confounded coarse caricaturists with refined and thoughtful journalists, even as, in the account of that inshore skirmish, he turns a gun-brig into a British frigate. However, such matters are too large ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... shores may it be found; and with a pleasant feeling of excitement I wondered if he would also bring back news of—her; some sign, a thin line of smoke above the trees! It was not the excitement of battle, or a skirmish; no, it was the approaching reality of a dream that had gripped me with soft fingers since the moment I entered this forest. Since my eyes had rested on that pool, my heart had called afresh for her. The arms of ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... | You are respectfully requested to enlist in a | | Military Skirmish | | On Friday Evening February twenty-second | | At the Barrack, seven forty-six First Street. | | Assembly call By order of | | Eight o'clock Mrs. John Smith | | sharp ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... on facts, for which I am indebted to personal communications from the Countess Ahlefeldt. Theodore Korner fell in the first year of the war of liberation, before the decisive battle of Leipsic, on the 26th of August, 1813, in a skirmish which the corps of Major von Lutzow had with the French near Gadebusch. Only an hour prior to his death, while lying in ambush, he wrote his immortal "Song of the Sword" in his note-book. The statement of Mr. Alison, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... "am I to write vaudevilles when I feel within me the courage and strength for joining the actors on the stage of real life?" Alas! for him the end was to be swift and tragic. Not long after inditing an ode to his sword, he fell in a skirmish near Hamburg. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... speaks of the lower anamiles as though we just has it on 'em completely in the matter of intelligence, but for myse'f I ain't so shore. The biggest fool of a mule-eared deer savvys enough to go feedin' up the wind, makin' so to speak a skirmish line of its nose to feel out ambushes. Any old bull elk possesses s'fficient wisdom to walk in a half-mile circle, as a concloodin' act before reetirin' for the night, so that with him asleep in the center, even if the wind does shift, his nose'll still ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... insistence the storm broke. Sally Carrol felt a film of flakes melt quickly on her eyelashes, and Harry reached over a furry arm and drew down her complicated flannel cap. Then the small flakes came in skirmish-line, and the horse bent his neck patiently as a transparency of white appeared ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... education. He had already read many books on the hillside. In his fourteenth year, he became a shepherd and tended his first flock at Boghead, parish of Auchinleck, Ayrshire, in the immediate vicinity of Airsmoss, the scene of the skirmish, in 1680, between a body of the soldiers of Charles II. and a small party of Covenanters, when their minister, the famous Richard Cameron, was slain. The traditions which still floated among the peasantry around the tombstone of this indomitable pastor of the persecuted ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... neighbourhood of Courtrai, on the Franco-Belgian frontier. He made his way there with considerable difficulty and received a cordial welcome. The very first night that he was there a squadron of Uhlans galloped into the town, there was a slight skirmish, and they galloped out again. The correspondent, who was a sound sleeper, did not wake up until it was all over. Then he learned that the Uhlans had ridden under ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... up to Lepanto. The Venetians had collected their scattered fleet, and had been reinforced by their allies of France and Rhodes; it was clear they were bent on revenge. The Turks hugged the land, dropped anchor at night, and kept a sharp look-out. It was a perpetual skirmish all the way. The Venetians tried to surprise the enemy at their moorings, but they were already at sea, and squally weather upset Grimani's strategy and he had the mortification of seeing his six fire-ships burning innocuously ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... that in a skirmish the whites had killed thirteen Shawnees, two Mingos, and one Delaware (this may or may not mean the massacres by Cresap and Greathouse; see, post, chapter on ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... revolver in hand, I had to keep guard at the side of the ambulance carts, to keep the marauders away from the wounded. Once I had a narrow escape from being captured by the Bavarians. It was at a skirmish of artillery. A couple of French and a couple of German pieces were in position. The French were quickly disabled by the Germans, and even the head gunner was severely wounded. I took him on my shoulders, and got him out of ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... the most serious period in the history of the Covenanters. Hitherto we have been on the skirmish line. All we have yet reviewed has been leading up to the desperate and sanguinary struggle, which lasted twenty-eight years, costing treasures of blood and indescribable suffering, yet finally resulting in the wealthy ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... needless. The boy had other feuds on hand. His gang had been feeding fat an ancient grudge against the boys in the next block or the block beyond, waiting for the first storm to wipe it out in snow, and the day opened with a brisk skirmish between the opposing hosts. In the school the plans for the campaign were perfected, and when it was out they met in the White Garden, known to the directory as Tompkins Square, the traditional duelling-ground of the lower East Side; and there ensued such a ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... Providence, she insisted on accompanying him, and was with the regiment during its entire term of service, in all its long marches sharing its privations and enduring its hardships. At the battle of Bull Run she was on the skirmish line with her husband, who was at the time a sergeant. She wore a uniform somewhat similar to that of the regiment, and was proficient in the use of a revolver and a short, straight sword, that she always wore ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke

... Donald. I can't return to the ballroom with my eyes red. You will never know how a woman on the stage has to fight to earn her bread. And that part is only a skirmish compared to the ceaseless war men wage against her. She has only the fortifications of her wit and her presence of mind. Was I not abducted in the heart of Paris? And but for the cowardice of the man, who knows what might have happened? If I have beauty, God gave it to me to ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... second day, the negotiations having failed, Joseph notified Rawn that he should go into the valley the next morning in spite of all opposition. Accordingly at daylight, firing was heard on the skirmish line, and it was supposed that the Indians would at once assault the main line. Stray shots continued for some time, and, as all the attention of officers and men was concentrated on the front, a man called attention of Lieutenant Coolidge to the fact that he had seen the heads of a few ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields

... church, eight young Indians burned a few houses in the village of Swansea, the nearest town to the Wampanoag headquarters at Mount Hope. The whites immediately raised a few troops, marched after the Indians, and had a little skirmish with them. ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney

... human nature is very strange. Thousands of people started to leave Manhattan, but there were other thousands during that first skirmish who did their best to try and get to the neighborhood of Patton Place to see what was going on. They added greatly to the confusion. Traffic soon was stalled everywhere. Traffic officers, confused, frightened ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... an actor; and if I ever had a private character, I have forgotten it. I am no more a genuine brigand than I am a genuine courier. I am only a bundle of masks, and you can't fight a duel with that." And he laughed with boyish pleasure and fell into his old straddling attitude, with his back to the skirmish up ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... end of the day the rebel army broke and began to roll back through Liskeard and towards the passes of the Tamar, and Mark followed with his troops to Saltash, into Devonshire, and as far as Chagford, where he rode by Mr. Sydney Godolphin in the skirmish which gave that valiant young gentleman his mortal wound. Soon after the whole of the King's forces retired upon Tavistock, where a truce was patched up between the opposing factions in the West. But this did not release Mark, who was kept at duty on the border until ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... It's well for you to joke about the poor! You may skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman's, or humour a love like my old nurse's, I know that there is not a joy or sorrow, not an ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... suffering and all enjoyment are of necessity personal. Suffering is not increased by extending it over a million instances. There was not more pain because a larger number happened to be be killed in the European war than are killed in a borderland skirmish. There were a larger number of people involved in the one case than in the other, but that is all. Multiplying the number of cases makes a greater appeal to a sluggish imagination, but it adds nothing substantial to the fact. ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... celebrate, While they keep distance, and attend my state.— Parent to her, whose eyes my soul enthral, [To ABEN. Whom I, in hope, already father call, Abenamar, thy youth these sports has known, Of which thy age is now spectator grown; Judge-like thou sit'st, to praise, or to arraign The flying skirmish of the darted cane: But, when fierce bulls run loose upon the place, And our bold Moors their loves with danger grace, Then heat new-bends thy slacken'd nerves again, And a short youth runs ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... debts, stealing of arms, and finally cruel war, as if lying and robbing, in the long run, could upset free and honest industry. After the loss of California and the Pacific coast, the struggle for the Territories was but a, preliminary skirmish of the war for the conquest and desolation of the Union. The people had waged the battle of liberty with the gigantic agencies of material prosperity for forty years, and the aristocracy was completely ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... glory by delaying the advance for several hours, giving Washington ample time to withdraw his army across the Assunpink and post it in a strong defensive position, had retired in good order beyond the American line. In the skirmish Lieutenant Von Grothausen, he who had galloped away with the dragoons at Trenton and had been under suspicion of cowardice ever since, had somewhat redeemed his reputation in that he had boldly ridden down upon the riflemen, and had been killed. It was late in the evening when the advance parties ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... the skirmish was hot. The British fought doggedly, as many believed what Dunmore had told them, that if captured the Virginians would scalp them. Rodney received a light flesh wound, but most of the Americans escaped uninjured, while several ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... at the little passage—the traveller's importation of one or two Britishisms had been the subject of skirmish before—but silence fell among them for a moment afterward. They all had in the blood the remembrance of what Lorne ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... assailants with a vicious side blow at the merchant, and throwing himself upon the sergeant's horse, regardless of a bullet from the latter's revolver, he galloped away, and was speedily out of range. As to Williams, from the beginning of the skirmish he had lain face downwards upon the ground, twisting his thin limbs about in an agony of ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... accept thine offer. I would not willingly perish in some obscure skirmish when the gates of Jerusalem are as the gates of heaven before me, and I shall present my preserver to my father. Are you ill ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... just passed through one of the forest villages, which, but a few days since, must have been loveliness itself.—Vineyards, gardens, a bright stream, a rustic chapel on a hill—every thing shaped for the delight of the eye! But a desperate skirmish had occurred there between the retreating Republicans and their pursuers, and all that man could ruin was ruined. The cottages were all in ashes, the gardens trampled, the vineyards cut down for the fires of the bivouac, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... girls in bright-colored shawls, whose rollicking role seemed to be that of snatching away from the young men the stalks of green corn, squash, and gourds they had brought up from the fields below. The scene ended in a merry skirmish ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett

... to get many men together—of the kind we want," admitted Lefever. "You'll have to skirmish some between now and midnight. What do ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... of Nestor, in the rear, (Their fellows routed,) toss the distant spear, And skirmish wide: so Nestor gave command, When from the ships he sent the Pylian band. The youthful brothers thus for fame contend, Nor knew the fortune of Achilles' friend; In thought they view'd him still, with martial joy, Glorious in arms, and dealing death ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... after mentioning Lord Orford's (Horace Walpole) History of His Own Time, continues:—'The Memoirs of our Scots Sir George Mackenzie are of the same class—both immersed in little political detail, and the struggling skirmish of party, seem to have lost sight of the great progressive movements of human affairs.' Lockhart's Scott ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... clung to their knees. With some difficulty the major stopped the slaughter and had the four terrified girls locked up in a room under the care of two soldiers, and then he organized the pursuit of the fugitive as carefully as if he were about to engage in a skirmish, feeling quite sure ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... this little skirmish might have proceeded we cannot tell, for it was brought to an abrupt close by the sudden appearance of a black bear. It was on turning a cliff which bordered the edge of a stream that they came upon the monster—so close to it that they had ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... that of the Royalists, were yet unable to withstand the impetuosity with which the latter always attacked, the men seeming, indeed, to be seized with a veritable panic at the sight of the gay plumes of Rupert's gentlemen. In a fierce skirmish between Harry's troop and a party of Parliament horse of about equal strength, the latter were defeated, and Harry, returning with the main body, found a Puritan officer dismounted, with his back against a tree, defending himself from the attacks of three of his men. Harry ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... in mud huts thatched with straw. They had no currency and no ventilation,—no drafts, in other words. Their boats were made of wicker-work plastered with clay. Their swords were made of tin alloyed with copper, and after a brief skirmish, the entire army had to fall ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye

... Spanish and German envoys, produced on the whole army the effect of a spark applied to a train of gunpowder. Commines and the Venetian 'proveditori' each tried in vain to arrest the combat an either side. Light troops, eager for a skirmish, and, in the usual fashion of those days, prompted only by that personal courage which led them on to danger, had already come to blows, rushing down into the plain as though it were an amphitheatre where they might make a fine display of arms. Far a moment the young king, drawn on by example, was ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... palazzos, and all those other architectural features so characteristic of the City of the Doges. There is no questioning what these Istrian coast-towns were or are. They are as Italian to-day as when, a thousand years ago, they formed a part of Venice's far-flung skirmish line. But penetrate even a single mile into the interior of the peninsula and you find a wholly different race from these Latins of the littoral, a different architecture (if architecture can be applied to square huts built of sun-dried bricks) and a different ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... The hostess intervened promptly with anecdotes of her own cynical daring as a Bazaar-seller, Miss Sharsper offered fragments of a reminiscence about signing one of her own books for a Bookstall, Blenker told a well-known Bazaar anecdote brightly and well, and the impending skirmish ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... fail; by which means he was spared many an exhibition of hateful passions and ruffian violence, which annoyed his guests and friends. But now all things had changed: deep silence reigned in the pantry; the kitchen rang no more with martial alarums; and the hall was unvexed with skirmish or pursuit. Yet it may be readily supposed that to Kant, at the age of seventy-eight, changes, even for the better, were not welcome: so intense had been the uniformity of his life and habits, that the least innovation ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... hopefully a few moments longer, and then returned to their bargaining. Inside the big damp stone-walled corridor Constance drew a deep breath and smiled upon the jailoress; the jailoress smiled back. Then as a preliminary skirmish, Constance presented the two-franc piece; and the jailoress ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster

... laws could not be executed. Neville, a revolutionary veteran of tried valor, was able to obtain the help of an officer and eleven soldiers from Fort Pitt, but the mob was too numerous and too well-armed to be withstood by so weak a force. After a skirmish in which the mob fired the buildings and the place became untenable, the troops had to surrender. Soon after this affair, a convention of delegates from the four western counties of Pennsylvania was called to ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford

... girl, gentle and timid, and was pre-destined for misfortune. She was found dead in the Pere Lachaise cemetery after the skirmish between the Communists and the Versailles troop. A stray bullet struck her in the back of the neck as she was praying at the grave of her little sister, who had died two days before from small-pox. I had taken her with me to St. Germain, ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... We had a skirmish about mutton, but the last Pole sent is good—in fact, excellent. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... Hunter baby were only too well founded. The cold was not serious, but there was a frightened skirmish for hot water and lubricants before morning. The hoarse little cough gave way under the treatment, but the first baby's first cold is always a thing of grave importance to inexperienced parents, and Elizabeth ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... had won the opening skirmish in the railroad regulation controversy. Incidentally it had come out in the open squarely for the Wright bill. From that moment the machine Senators labored openly for the passage of the measure. ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... mountaineer replied "an' that was how the little trouble we had begun. At least, it had a good deal to do with it. Isaac an' I had never got along, an' jes' befo' the war, we had some words about the Kentucky State Guards. But I wasn't bearin' any grudge, an' I never supposed Isaac was. However, in a skirmish near Cumberland Gap, I saw that he was jes' achin' to get me, an' the way he tried was jes' about the meanes' thing I ever heard o' any ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... if them was not an enemy within a hundred miles. After the line deployed, he "dressed" it, commanded "Front!" and "Begin, firing!" his attention was called another way for an instant, and when he looked back again, there was not a man of his nicely formed skirmish line visible. The logs and stones had evidently been put there for the use of skirmishers, the boys thought, and in an instant they ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... in the ribs with remarks about the "old man's millions," etc. Once or twice it boiled over and I was threatened with summary arrest. When I got home, I slept on the counter with the edition for my pillow, in order to be up with the first gleam of daylight to skirmish for newsboys. I gathered them in from street and avenue, compelled them to come in if they were not willing, and made such inducements for them that shortly South Brooklyn resounded with the cry of "News" from sunrise to sunset on Saturday. The politicians who ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... went slap into one of those mounds. I further remember that I was not the only Sixty-firster that imprecated in strong Saxon. But there we were, and there we lay till sunrise. We learned that the day before a lively skirmish had been fought here, in which one of ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller

... her flight, George was thankful that the girl had disappeared. He perceived that he had too quickly eliminated Percy from the list of the Things That Matter. Engrossed with his own affairs, and having regarded their late skirmish as a decisive battle from which there would be no rallying, he had overlooked the possibility of this annoying and unnecessary person following them in another cab—a task which, in the congested, slow-moving traffic, must have been a perfectly simple ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... on that skirmish line have at last found it advisable to lie down at full length on the ground, though it is so wet, and place their heads against the trees in front. They cannot advance and they cannot retire without, in either case, exposing themselves to almost certain death. They are waiting ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... policy and fear each told me that it would be safer to attack Betty and her father separately. The odds of two against one, in this case, I feared would be too great for me to overcome. So I led Betty to her parlor,—rather she led me,—and after a preliminary skirmish, I told her I had come to see her on a most ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... Alleghanies during the whole war—that my story must begin. I was then serving as Major in the —th Massachusetts Regiment—the old —th, as we used to call it—and a bloody time the boys had of it too. About 2 p. m. we had been sent out to skirmish along the edge of the wood in which, as our generals suspected, the Rebs lay massing for a charge across the slope, upon the crest of which our army was posted. We had barely entered the underbrush when we met the ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray

... his companions had had to defend themselves against hostile mountaineers, who rushed suddenly upon them out of the woods. When they were about two days' journey still from the end of their march, they had a bloody skirmish with a roving band of men that seemed to belong to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... on the 21st, the day of the great battle, the other fell,—both bearers of historic names, both upholding the cause of their State with as unclouded a conscience as any saint in the martyrology ever wore; and from that day to the end, great battle and outpost skirmish brought me, week by week, a personal loss in men ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve

... rather animated than terrified by the blow, he immediately beat his antagonist to the ground, and so encouraged his troops by the example, that they put the French to total rout, and had very nearly taken their king prisoner. The dignity of the persons engaged in this skirmish rendered it the most memorable action of the war; for, in other respects, it was not of great importance. There were nine hundred horsemen, who fought on both sides; yet were there only two persons slain. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... reverend aspect and stately form, with white beard flowing on his bosom, appeared among them and took command with an air of authority which none could gainsay. He bade them charge on the screeching rabble, and after a short sharp skirmish the tawny foe was put to flight. When the pursuers came together again, after the excitement of the rout, their deliverer was not to be found. In their wonder, as they knew not whence he came or ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... to possess the government property, or entrench themselves strongly in their new quarters,—the general, with characteristic promptness, ordered an advance upon Booneville. The rebel force was stationed above Rockport, but retreated, after a skirmish which did not assume the proportions of a battle; and the Union army, two thousand strong, entered the town, where the national colors and the welcomes of the inhabitants testified ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... man as it was dishonourable in the prince; in which his frivolous nature found and took vengeance for the gravity and burthen of the afternoon. He chuckled as he thought of it: and Greisengesang heard him with wonder, and attributed his lively spirits to the skirmish of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... played no idle game in the previous skirmish, was the first who rushed to the attack. Crying out, with all the theatrical air of a Frenchman, which never deserts him, even in the agony of grief, "Mes braves compagnons, vous serez venges!" he flew at McDermot, the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... never be content in any of the deserts; where, still clothed in armour, cap-a-pie, he endeavoured in vain to forget his belligerent propensities, for, every now and then, when he heard of a siege toward, he would suddenly sally forth, and having assisted in the skirmish, again seized with a fit of repentant devotion, would hurry back to some desolate retreat, and endeavour, by penitence and fasts, to obliterate ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... hammering it into shape, and sends it charging back against Ukiukiu around the western side of the mountain. And all the while, above and below the main battle-field, high up the slopes toward the sea, Ukiukiu and Naulu are continually sending out little wisps of cloud, in ragged skirmish line, that creep and crawl over the ground, among the trees and through the canyons, and that spring upon and capture one another in sudden ambuscades and sorties. And sometimes Ukiukiu or Naulu, abruptly sending ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... woman with a very sharp tongue was sent to talk to the minister's wife. The war-cloud thickened, the pickets were driven in, and then a skirmish, and after a while all the batteries were opened, and each side said that the other side lied, and the minister dropped his pocket-handkerchief and showed his claws as long as those of Nebuchadnezzar ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... moving on in silence, Save for rattling iron and steel, And a skirmish echoing round us, Showering faintly, peal ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... old colonel, who recollected that I had helped him out of the skirmish at Montereau by giving him my horse, and he had offered me bed and board at his house. I knew that the year before he had married a castle and no few farms, so that I might become permanent coat-brusher to a millionaire, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Electoral Prince come on, we are ready to receive him. There will be a hard struggle, but I have been victorious over all my enemies for twenty years, and shall probably conquer the little Electoral Prince too! Now a hurried toilet, and then to the Elector, to open the skirmish in his neighborhood! Ah, we shall see, my young Prince! For you shouts the rabble of Berlin, for me speaks the Elector! We shall see which of us two has built upon ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... passed within half a mile, following along the track by which you came! If you had been awake—and cooking—or singing—or making any sort of noise they must have heard you! Instead, they turned down toward the plain a little short distance too soon—and my men met them—and there was a skirmish—and I rallied my other men, and attacked them suddenly. We accounted for two of the tin-plate men, and so many of the thing they call a regiment that the others took to flight. Jannam! (My soul!) But you ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... miles. The forces engaged numbered about 1,500,000 men. Thus this battle far exceeds in magnitude the battle of Mukden, previously considered the greatest battle of modern times; while the great battle of Waterloo was an insignificant skirmish in comparison. It is of further interest to learn that Allied success was largely the result of the use of flying machines for scouting purposes, which enabled General Joffre to take instant advantage of tactical mistakes of General Von Kluck. The results were commensurate with the immensity of the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... After midnight, they went out "de shoppis suis" and danced and sang in the streets. A clerk, irritated by the noise, attacked them with a drawn sword, wounded one of them, and was himself mortally wounded in the skirmish. Of twenty-nine coroners' inquests which have been preserved for the period 1297-1322, thirteen are murders committed by scholars. Attacks on townsmen were not mere undergraduate follies, but were ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait

... "After the sharp skirmish on the second line of defense of the Spaniards, and after Greene's brigade moved through Malate, meeting a shuffling foe, the open space at the luneta, just south of the walled city, was reached about 1 p. m. A white flag ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... exorbitaut terms. Laudonniere himself throughout would have adopted moderate and conciliatory measures, but his men at length became impatient and seized one of the principal Indian chiefs as a hostage for the good behavior of his countrymen. A skirmish ensued, in which the French were victorious. It was clear, however, that the settlement could not continue to depend on supplies extorted from the Indians at the point of the sword. The settlers felt that they were ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various

... busy day with Mrs. McKinstry, or it is doubtful whether she would have allowed even this close to the skirmish, for she had a taste for such encounters. Blair however heard the dripping and swashing of water in the rear of the house as he went up the narrow stairway. The wide cap-border of Mrs. McKinstry was fanning backwards and forwards, as she ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... the month our cavalry relieved the infantry on the line of the Rapidan, and on the nineteenth, in a sharp skirmish between Stuart's and Bayard's forces, Captain Charles Walters, of the Harris Light Cavalry, was killed. This officer was very popular in the regiment, and his death cast a gloom over all. Wrapped in a soldier's ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... inquietude Than courtiers at a banquet would. And Charles of this his slender share With smiles partook a moment there, To force of cheer a greater show, And seem above both wounds and woe;— And then he said—"Of all our band, Though firm of heart and strong of hand, In skirmish, march, or forage, none Can less have said or more have done 100 Than thee, Mazeppa! On the earth So fit a pair had never birth, Since Alexander's days till now, As thy Bucephalus and thou: All Scythia's fame to thine should ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... take it, but the missionary spoke kindly to him, and after a little, as he had been out of the stuff for days, his fingers closed on it; and then the missionary knew that he had conquered in the first skirmish. Tobacco among these Indians is like salt among the Arabs. Knowing this, the missionary, who never used it himself, adopted this plan to make ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... the two professors was very popular, beloved by all, passing for a sage, a great poet, and a man of advanced ideas. One day when he accompanied the collegians on their walk, he had a dispute with some cadets, which resulted in a skirmish and a challenge. No doubt recalling his brilliant youth, the professor preached a crusade and promised good marks to all who during the promenade on the following Sunday would take part in the fray. The week was a lively one—there were ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... exponent of Jeanne d'Albret and the valorous general of the Reformers. He travelled at the rear of the conspirators as far as Vendome, intending to support them in case of their success. When the first uprising ended by a brief skirmish, in which the flower of the nobility beguiled by Calvin perished, the prince arrived, with fifty noblemen, at the chateau of Amboise on the very day after that fight, which the politic Guises termed "the Tumult of Amboise." As soon as the duke and cardinal heard of ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... other, sitting back in his chair, "it is pretty good stuff that. Folks always like the pen pictures of men engaged in the skirmish better than the reports of ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr

... a study of him and his methods, and partly from facts which I learned from one of the band who was fatally shot a few years ago in a skirmish between the brigands and a posse of officials. The man was deserted by his associates and was brought to town and placed in a hospital. I did what I could to make the poor fellow comfortable, with the result that he became quite communicative ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... as we shall see, it is only a question of quickness of response, for while the first bands of the enemy may be held at bay by the leucocyte cavalry, and a light attack repelled by their skirmish-line, yet when it comes to the heavy fighting of a fever-invasion, it is the slow but substantial burgher-like fixed cells of the body which form the real infantry masses of the campaign. And I believe that upon the proportional relation between these primitive and civilized ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... was returning, they divided their troops, and General Wooster, with about 300 men, fell in his rear, while Arnold, with about 500, crossing the country, took post in his front at Ridgefield. Wooster came up with his rear about 11 in the morning, attacked it with great gallantry, and a sharp skirmish ensued in which he was mortally wounded, [2] and ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... had retired before him to Poitiers, eighteen miles due west of Chauvigny. Careless of his convoy, he hurried across country in the hope of catching the elusive enemy, but was only in time to fight a rear-guard skirmish at a manor named La Chaboterie, on the road from Chauvigny to Poitiers, on September, 17. That night the English lay in a wood hard by the scene of action, suffering terribly from want of water. Next ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... morning—the 24th of October—they came out of Ladysmith, and the battle of Modder Spruit[8] began. With the sole exception of the skirmish between the Harrismith burghers and the Carabineers at Bester Station on the 18th of October, when Jonson, a burgher of Harrismith, was killed—the earliest victim in our fight for freedom—this was the first fighting the Free-Staters ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... the robber chief's permanent haunt is somewhere in the Sierras. This must be found. The sheriffs of Placer, Nevada, Sierra, El Dorado, Tuolumne, Calaveras, and Mariposa counties are in the field with posses. Skirmish after skirmish occurs. All doubtful men are arrested. Yet the red record continues. Doubling on the pursuers, hiding, the bandit whirls from Shasta to Tehama, from Oroville to Sacramento, from Marysville to Placerville. Stockton, San ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... armed, but met with a stout resistance, which proved, however, unavailing, the invaders succeeding in making about 150 prisoners, whom they carried off to the West Indies, and killing as many more in the skirmish. It is supposed that King Aqua received very little reward for his services on the occasion, or for the loss his subjects sustained in the fight. This anecdote was related to me by Captain Cumings, of the Kent, who was trading on the opposite coast for palm-oil, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... north of Moreau. [51] The design of the Archduke succeeded in the end, but it opened Germany to the French for six weeks, and showed how worthless was the military constitution of the Empire, and how little the Germans had to expect from one another. After every skirmish won by Moreau some neighbouring State abandoned the common defence and hastened to make its terms with the invader. On the 17th of July the Duke of Wuertemberg purchased an armistice at the price of four million francs; a week later Baden gained the French general's ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... of the multitude, turned a deaf ear to all this uproar, and steadily refused to summon an assembly, lest some hasty resolution should be passed, which would lead to useless loss of life. In order, however, to relieve the public excitement, he sent out a body of horsemen to skirmish with the enemy, and despatched a fleet of a hundred triremes to ravage the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... do it. Whereupon he went to work; but William fought bravely, and the young master, finding he was getting the better of him, undertook to tie his hands behind him. He failed in that likewise. By dint of kicking and fisting, William came out of the skirmish none the worse for ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... the south-west coast of Africa. It was a record voyage, for even Columbus had only been two thousand six hundred miles without seeing land. November found them in a broad bay, "and," says the old log of the voyage, "we named it St. Helena," which name it still retains. After a skirmish with some tawny-coloured Hottentots the explorers sailed on, putting "their trust in the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... British troops, under the command of Major-General Sir John Maxwell, were assigned for the protection of the Canal. About the end of October it was reported that 2,000 Bedouins were marching on the Canal, and on November 21st a skirmish took place between this force and some of the English troops in which the Bedouins were repelled. Nothing more was heard for more than two months, but on January 28, 1915, a small advance party from the Turkish army was beaten back east of El-Kantara. British airmen ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... himself for riding away from a fight, could only revile his useless gun and excuse himself a trifle because of his defenselessness. The skirmish had served to arouse him, however, and for that he was thankful to the convict who had waited in ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... good soldier. In many a skirmish with the British and Tories, he acted a conspicuous part. He was with Colonel Elijah Clarke in the battle of Kettle Creek, and was severely wounded by a rifleball passing through his thigh, by which he was made a cripple for life. He was unable to do further military ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... on we met another guard equipped similarly to the first. Upon reaching the town, news had just been received that a detachment of troops from another post had intercepted the ladrones and fought a skirmish with them. The ladrones had escaped and we set out in pursuit of them on a chase wilder than a Quixotic dream. We wound our way into the mountains behind the town, inquiring at every grass hut we passed whether the band of ladrones had ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley

... to Lord Ruthven, the earl told him he must now salute him as Lord Badenoch, his brother having been killed a few days before in a skirmish on the skirts of Ettrick Forest. Ruthven then turned to welcome the entrance of Bruce, who, raising his visor, received from the loyal chief the homage due to his sovereign dignity. Wallace and the prince soon engaged him in a discourse immediately connected ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... and ran up between the dusty lines of dwarf box, eager to tell her what he had done. He thumped on the cracked, unpainted door, and impatiently waited the skirmish of observation along the edge of the window-blinds. This was unduly drawn out. Presently he heard women's voices whispering to each other inside. They seemed urgent, almost angry voices. Now and then ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... comrades. The Duke of Najera (13) having arrived at Perpignan in command of two thousand men, requested Amadour to be his lieutenant, and so well did Amadour fulfil his duty with this band, that in every skirmish the ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... a lump in her throat that threatened tears, slipped behind the people, caught the two little step-brothers in her arms and smothered them with kisses, amid their loud protestations and the laughter of those who stood about. But the little skirmish had served to hide the tears, and the bride came back most decorously to where her stepmother stood awaiting her with a smile of complacent—almost completed—duty upon her face. She wore the sense of having carried off a trying situation in a most creditable manner, ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... Cranbrook for many years, and found there frequent subjects of rustic study. The Sissinghurst ruins are fragmentary, excepting the grand entrance, which is well preserved. Baker's Cross survives to mark the spot where the Anabaptists had a skirmish with their great enemy; and the legend is that he was killed there, though history asserts that this theological warrior died in his bed peaceably some time afterwards ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... lumps of armed friends approaching from the rear, determined to go on occupying. This, in a spirit of great courage, with slowly increasing forces, against rapidly increasing forces, they did, until the brisk and pliant skirmish which opened the business of the day had grown so in weight and ferocity that it was evident to the least astute that the decisive battle of the ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... beyond this point we had a lively skirmish with robbers, during which I earned a reputation for courage by calling for my supper in the midst of the excitement. Meccah lies in a winding valley, and is not to be seen until the pilgrim is close at hand. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... up. Kitty touched him on the shoulder as he was standing on the stairs, apparently absorbed in a teasing skirmish with a charming child in her first season, who thought him ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... red summer flowers, they met their regiment returning. They had done their work, the Turks had ceased attacking and the weary regiment which had been kept busy the long, hot days in this outpost skirmish had been relieved. The tired troopers trailed homewards, carelessly tramping the dewy wild poppy heads on their way. A bathe and a drink, and then ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... insinuated that she had so many lovers that she herself could not tell who was the father of her child; but the lumps of gold had a language of their own. The disbanded army espoused the young priest's cause; there was a skirmish, Macrin was killed, and ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... of fact, their sex does few of them any good. The reverse. You see, an attractive woman—one who's attractive as a woman—can skirmish round and find some one to support her. But most of the working women—those who keep on at it—don't find the man. They're not attractive, not even at the start. After they've been at it a few years and lose the little bloom they ever had—why, they've got to take their ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... allies then coming up, I stated my reasons for regarding Prof. Tiele 'rather as an ally than an adversary,' the reason being his own statement. Presently, I replied to Prof. Tiele's criticism of my treatment of the myth of Cronos. After a skirmish on Italian fields, I gave my reasons for disagreeing with Mr. Max Muller's view of Mannhardt's position. His theory of Demeter Erinnys was contrasted with that of Mr. Max Muller. Totemism occupied us next, and the views of Mr. Max Muller and Mr. J. G. Frazer were criticised. ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... is very strange. Thousands of people started to leave Manhattan, but there were other thousands during that first skirmish who did their best to try and get to the neighborhood of Patton Place to see what was going on. They added greatly to the confusion. Traffic soon was stalled everywhere. Traffic officers, confused, frightened by the news which was bubbled at them from every side, ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... been a question of peculiar interest to us Europeans, as several of their great men had fallen in a skirmish (whether an accidental one or a decided combat made not the slightest difference). We knew their barbarous custom; and, consequently, we were preparing for scenes of deadly revenge and insatiable fury to be acted by both parties, and which must have involved ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... before. I have seen tears on the men's cheeks, and others turn pale under such circumstances. I have a little flag,—it belonged to one of our cavalry regiments,—presented to me by one of the wounded. It was taken by the rebs in a cavalry fight, and rescued by our men in a bloody little skirmish. It cost three men's lives just to get one little flag four by three. Our men rescued it, and tore it from the breast of a dead rebel. All that just for the name of getting their little banner back again. The ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... (Sunday).—My mother drove to church and took Edith, who was glad neither to walk nor to have to skirmish for a seat. Isa walked with Emily and me, and so we made up our five for our seat, which, to our dismay, is in the gallery, but, happily for my mother, the stairs are easy. The pews there are not quite ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge

... heart, Miles Standish the Captain of Plymouth. "Look at these arms," he said, "the warlike weapons that hang here Burnished and bright and clean, as if for parade or inspection! This is the sword of Damascus I fought with in Flanders; this breastplate, Well, I remember the day! once saved my life in a skirmish; Here in front you can see the very dint of the bullet. Had it not been of sheer steel, the forgotten bones of Miles Standish Would at this moment be mold, in the grave in the Flemish morasses." Thereupon answered John Alden, but looked not up from his writing: "Truly ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... was dozing over the Osservatore Romano in his study. To tell the truth the paper was less dull than usual, for there was war and rumour of war in its columns. Garibaldi had raised a force of volunteers and was in the neighbourhood of Arezzo, beginning to skirmish with the outlying posts of the pontifical army along the frontier. The old gentleman did not know, of course, that on that very day the Italian Government was issuing its proclamation against the great agitator, and possibly if he had been ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... settlement established in 1658 by Gov. Peter Stuyvesant in the northeastern part of Manhattan Island. It existed for 200 years but is now lost under modern Harlem, which centers about 125th St. In this neighborhood to the west occurred the battle of Harlem Heights—a lively skirmish fought Sept. 16, 1776, opposite the west front of the present Columbia University, and resulting in a victory for the forces of Gen. Washington, who up to that time had suffered a number of reverses on Long Island and elsewhere. The battle was directed ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... the thick of it, he could hardly have seen less or known less of what happened in that particular skirmish if he had been at home in England. For many good reasons,—including dust and smoke, and that what attention he dared distract from his commanding officer was pretty well absorbed by keeping his hard-mouthed troop-horse in hand, under pain of execration by his neighbors in the melee. By and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... I," replied Jack; "else I wouldn't be so keen about getting into that house. We'll go back and skirmish around ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake

... duel took place, an important event occurred in the death of Roger Mortimer, the Lollard Earl of March, whom the King had proclaimed heir presumptive of England. He was Viceroy of Ireland, and was killed in a skirmish by the "wild Irish." March, who was only 24 years of age, left four children, of whom we shall hear more anon, to be educated by their mother, Archbishop Arundel's niece, in her own Popish views. He is described by the monkish chroniclers as "very ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... driven at will, choosing their own times and seasons for travel. And hers, just now, proved obstinately home-staying—had no wings wherewith to fly, but must needs crawl a-fourfoot, around all manner of inglorious personal matters. For that skirmish with her ex-governess, though she successfully bridled her tongue and conquered by kindness rather than by smiting, had clouded her inward serenity, not only by its inherent uselessness, but by reminding her indirectly ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... learned these fellows had threatened to rob her shop. We had been such defenders of the sex, that we could not think of deserting this woman, and we swore we would stand by her, too. We should have had a skirmish here, I do believe, had not one or two rifle officers hove in sight, when the whole party made sail from us. We turned the woman over to these gentlemen, who said, "ay, there are some of our vagabonds, again." One of them said it would be better to call in their parties, and before we reached ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... term of reproach in every dictionary, I would not be tempted to a prosecution. I am highly flattered. It proves that I have succeeded in making the old man uncomfortable, and satisfies me. Just write a humorous sketch on the little skirmish, but don't give any names. The town will understand who is the principal character if you manage your article dexterously and with humour. Bring it to me to touch up when ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... sweep; it sounded in unison with the battle clamors, and shrieked and wailed and roared as it surged adown the defiles. Now and then there came on the blast the fusillade of dropping shots from the south, where the skirmish line of one faction engaged the rear-guard of the other, or the pickets fell within rifle-range. Once the sullen, melancholy boom of distant cannon shook the clouds, and then was still, and ever and ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... removable at will. Young Soudry, a companion of Gaubertin's son in Paris as well as at Les Aigues, had just been appointed assistant attorney in the capital of the department. Before the elder Soudry, a quartermaster in the artillery, became a brigadier of gendarmes, he had been wounded in a skirmish while defending Monsieur de Soulanges, then adjutant-general. At the time of the creation of the gendarmerie, the Comte de Soulanges, who by that time had become a colonel, asked for a brigade for his former protector, and later ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... her, whose eyes my soul enthral, [To ABEN. Whom I, in hope, already father call, Abenamar, thy youth these sports has known, Of which thy age is now spectator grown; Judge-like thou sit'st, to praise, or to arraign The flying skirmish of the darted cane: But, when fierce bulls run loose upon the place, And our bold Moors their loves with danger grace, Then heat new-bends thy slacken'd nerves again, And a short youth runs warm through ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... orders were so punctually observed that we received the fire of the enemy in three several and separate discharges of their pieces before it was returned by our commanding officer. The firing then soon became general for several minutes, in which skirmish two were killed on 5 each side and several of the enemy wounded. It may here be observed, by the way, that we were the more careful to prevent beginning a rupture with the King's troops as we were then uncertain what had happened at Lexington and knew not that they ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... house on Saturdays, my father allers throws a skirmish line of niggers across the road, with orders to capture my grandfather as he comes romancin' along. An' them faithful servitors never fails. They swarms down on my grandfather, searches him out of the saddle an' packs him exultin'ly an' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... again he sallied out and charged, but with all the army now thoroughly aroused it was useless, and the Indians having retreated, most of his own men ran off, leaving him and Captains Chevalier Duchesnay and Gaucher, officers much like himself in stamp, with a few trusty Voltigeurs to skirmish with the enemy as long as daylight permitted it.[17] He then withdrew to Chateauguay, taking the precaution of breaking up the forest road in his rear, in pursuance of the general policy of the campaign, ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall

... if the weather turned roughish, they'd be walking together and talking; leastwise, the youngster listened while the other discoursed about Sir John's campaign in Spain and Portugal, telling how each little skirmish befell; and of Sir John himself, and General Baird and General Paget, and Colonel Vivian, his own commanding officer, and what kind of men they were; and of the last bloody stand-up at Corunna, and so forth, as ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... underwood, And the trim walks are broken up, and grass, Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths. But never elsewhere in one place I knew So many Nightingales: and far and near In wood and thicket over the wide grove They answer and provoke each other's songs— With skirmish and capricious passagings, And murmurs musical and swift jug jug And one low piping sound more sweet than all— Stirring the air with such an harmony, That should you close your eyes, you might almost Forget it ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... retraced his steps as the terrors of suspicion and despair alternated with the faintly surviving hope that a stand might yet be made. Only once did he come into conflict with Metellus.[1096] The site of the skirmish is unknown, and its result was indecisive. The Numidian army is said to have been surprised and to have formed hastily for battle. The division led by the king offered a brief resistance; the rest of the line yielded at once to the Roman onset. A few standards and arms, a handful ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... therefore far less desirable in artillery than skill, patience, and cool courage. Artillery always acts at a distance, and in mass; single pieces are seldom employed, except to cover reconnoitring parties, or to sustain the light infantry in a skirmish. Mounted batteries sometimes approach within two or three hundred yards of the enemy's infantry; but this is only done with a strong support of other troops, and to prepare the way for a charge of cavalry. The batteries do not accompany the charge, but they should always follow up ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... worthy exponent of Jeanne d'Albret and the valorous general of the Reformers. He travelled at the rear of the conspirators as far as Vendome, intending to support them in case of their success. When the first uprising ended by a brief skirmish, in which the flower of the nobility beguiled by Calvin perished, the prince arrived, with fifty noblemen, at the chateau of Amboise on the very day after that fight, which the politic Guises termed "the Tumult of Amboise." As soon as the duke and cardinal heard of his coming they ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... his fleet, his cheeks burning with rage. In the first preliminary skirmish with the enemy, he realized he had been beaten. He had found out nothing of value. Had damaged his boat too, no doubt. Well, he'd make somebody pay for it before morning. Circling his boats, he gave orders for an immediate advance ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... to sweep the vessel on a shoal of sand with only 5 feet of water on it, as it was perfectly smooth we immediately hove her off without her sustaining the least damage and dropped back into our old berth between Point Paterson and Bowen's Point so named from Mr. Bowen's skirmish with the natives in it. The flies are now so troublesome as to almost hinder a person from sitting a ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee

... Emersonian declaration of independence. It was followed by a revolutionary war of opinion not yet ended or at present like to be. A local outbreak, if you will, but so was throwing the tea overboard. A provincial affair, if the Bohemian press likes that term better, but so was the skirmish where the gun was fired the echo of which is heard in every battle for freedom ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... one indulging a childish skirmish of wits; but controlled as his face was, I could see the relief that overspread it at my admission. "My name is Starling. I have a packet for you, monsieur," and he ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... days the green swamp or morass, called by the natives of Auld Reekie the Nor Loch; it was a dark gloomy day, and a thin veil of mist was beginning to settle down upon the brae and the morass. I could perceive, however, that there was a skirmish taking place in the latter spot. I had an indistinct view of two parties—apparently of urchins—and I heard whoops and shrill cries. Eager to know the cause of this disturbance, I left the castle, and descending ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... this officer was Meriot, and as finished a gentleman he was too, as I ever saw. I got acquainted with him after the war, at New York. Soon as the ceremony of introduction was over, he smiled, and asked if I were not in the skirmish just related? On being answered in the affirmative, he again inquired, if I did not recollect how handsomely one of the British officers gave me the slip that day? I told him I did. "Well," continued he, "I was that officer; and of all the frights ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... sat the centurion. He was a man of medium height, short necked, and thick set, with blunted features and grizzled hair and beard. Two of the fingers of his left hand were wanting, and a broad scar, the trophy of a severe skirmish among the Alemanni, crossed his right cheek and one side of his nose, giving him an expression more curious than pleasing. His general appearance was after the common type of an old, war-worn soldier, rough and unscrupulous by nature, hardened ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... you killed, but you'd better get away from here as fast as you can, and drop this witch man business for good and all. Here's two shillings. They'll get you something to eat when you get to Pennsylvania, but you'd better skirmish along in the woods the best you can till then, or you'll be jerked ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... it to you if I'm late; if I'm late, you may be sure I have good reason," muttered Agafya, busying herself about the stove, without a trace of anger or displeasure in her voice. She seemed quite pleased, in fact, to enjoy a skirmish with her merry ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... like this, now descanted upon, to guide its counsels? The general who risks nothing can win nothing. And the nation that should wait till absolutely sure of victory before unsheathing the sword would never draw it, or only in some poor skirmish, where victory would be as disgraceful as defeat. Besides, although such a nation were to rise by such victories, if victories those may be called won by a thousand over an hundred, who would not blush to own himself ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... letter was written, the young man was sent for. He and his company had captured a number of men in a skirmish. ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... your eyes peeled for an ambuscade. You will find that eventually all the trails will lead to the same place. If we are in luck, we will find them before they go on into the mountains, and we may have a skirmish. I hope, however, that we will be able to settle the matter without resorting to any shooting. Uncle Sam is mighty touchy about any one killing his Indians except his soldiers, no matter what an Indian does. We'll probably all come together ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... to see her dress came next; and here Christie had a slight skirmish with the mistress of that department relative to the length of her classical garments. As studies from the nude had not yet become one of the amusements of the elite of Little Babel, Christie was not required to appear in the severe ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... Parliament; an attempt on Charles's part to seize Hampden and four other members precipitated the Civil War; he took an active part in organising the Parliamentary forces, and proved himself a brave and skilful general in the field; he fell mortally wounded while opposing Prince Rupert in a skirmish at Chalgrove Field; historians unite in extolling his nobility of character, statesmanship, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... in the old days of his health, used to enjoy an occasional skirmish with her. Once, in the course of chaffering over the price of calas, he enounced an old current conviction which is not without holders even to this day; for we may still hear it said by those who will ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... savage hint of the hardships of campaigning, into which they had been plunged without any gradual steps of breaking in, and much more terrible experiences were close at hand. Of these there came a slight foretaste in a skirmish with the enemy on the 24th near Jericho Ford on the North Anna River, resulting in the death of one man and the wounding of three others, the first of what was soon to be a portentous ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill

... over toward Crazy Woman's Fork. There were enough to cover the country, red and black, for a dozen miles. We sighted them yesterday about four o'clock and there were enough around us to eat us alive, but we just threw out skirmish lines and marched steadily ahead, so they thought best not to bother us. They're shy of our breech loaders, damn 'em! That's all that ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... however, was but a skirmish. The date of the beginning of the real contest was Sept. 12, 1786, when, it was voted "to build a new meeting-house in the centre of the town, or in the nearest convenient place to the centre." It was thus ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... had a splendid time at the London shows. And then there was always the prospect of an exciting adventure getting home after the performance was over. The hotel generally found a taxi which took us to the theater. But once there we had to skirmish for ourselves and London is a big town, and hundreds of thousands of Londoners are hunting taxis at eleven at night, and they are hard to catch. So we generally had the fun of walking back to Brook Street in the dark. And it is dark in London toward midnight. Paris is merely gloomy. ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... at first thought it necessary to be introduced, and at each place McCarthy had to skirmish around and find the proper person. At Red Dog, on the Stanislaus, the man selected failed to appear, and Denis had to provide another on short notice. He went down into the audience and captured an old fellow, who ducked and dodged but could not escape. Denis led ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... reserved gentleman from Aix came under the ban of the critics and the authorities, for he had shouldered his musket in 1871, as did Manet, as did Bazille,—who, like Henri Regnault, was killed in a skirmish. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... surrendered; but the other fellow pounded away at the British privateer with a couple of swivel guns and put up a smart, little skirmish before a well-directed shot from the deck of the Englishman, knocked a topmast crashing over the ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... fortify himself in the church, a stone building. He arrived there at eleven o'clock in the morning. The Chinese, in number one thousand five hundred, arrived at the same place at the same time, bent on the same purpose. An hour's skirmish took place between the two sides, as to which one would gain the monastery. Captain Gaspar Perez came up with the reenforcement of the men left at Minondoc. The enemy retired to his fort, with a loss of five hundred men. Gaspar Perez returned to his post, where Pedro de Arzeo ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... Tete Rouge to provide himself, if he could, with a gun. He accordingly made earnest appeals to the charity of various persons in the fort, but totally without success, a circumstance which did not greatly disturb us, since in the event of a skirmish he would be much more apt to do mischief to himself or his friends than to the enemy. When all these arrangements were completed we saddled our horses and were preparing to leave the fort, when looking round we discovered that our new associate was in fresh trouble. A man was holding the ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... notice to get many men together—of the kind we want," admitted Lefever. "You'll have to skirmish some between now and midnight. What do you ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... is that the whole affair was scarcely more than a skirmish. A handful of the 2d Battalion of Fusilliers, a squadron or two of Uhlans, and a battery of Prussian artillery have for days faced and held in check a whole French division. When they were attacked they tranquilly turned a bold front to the ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... another in the open cultivated spaces between the woods. I did not see or hear of anybody being killed to-day, although there were a few wounded and some horses killed. Colonel Richmond and Colonel Webb were much disappointed that the inactivity of the enemy prevented my seeing the skirmish assume larger proportions, and General Cheetham said to me, "We should be very happy to see you, Colonel, when we are in our regular ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... into the hands of the royalist Yanez, whose bloodthirsty followers beheaded eighty soldiers who had been left behind, killed men, women and children, and destroyed the whole city by fire. A few days later this man was killed in a skirmish, and thus ended the life of a fiend whose name may be placed at the side of those of Boves and Morales, because of his delight in committing crimes. In the rest of the country the royalists were conducting guerrilla warfare, preventing the reunion of patriotic bodies and rendering ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... An Account of the Discovery of several Islands, and an Interview and Skirmish with the Inhabitants upon one of them. The Arrival of the Ship at Tanna, and the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... were prepared to take it; and carefully fixing on their snow-shoes, they made the venture, the lightest and most experienced Eskimo taking the lead, with the few remaining dogs attached to the long sledge following, "and the rest of the party abreast, in widely extended skirmish line, some distance behind the sledge." They crossed in silence, the ice swaying beneath them as they skimmed along. What the result would be none could tell; but they all felt the ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... wailing dropped into awed silence. Both youngsters stared amazed at the venerable Felix, whose face and figure expressed such composed dignity and sweetness; and Madame Patoux, nastily and with frequent gasps for breath, related the history of the skirmish. ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... diplomacy,—opportunity to the enemy to possess the government property, or entrench themselves strongly in their new quarters,—the general, with characteristic promptness, ordered an advance upon Booneville. The rebel force was stationed above Rockport, but retreated, after a skirmish which did not assume the proportions of a battle; and the Union army, two thousand strong, entered the town, where the national colors and the welcomes of the inhabitants testified their joy at ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Dread the battle, and stout the combat, mighty and manifold looms the war. Hard to decide in the fight they're waging, One like a stormy tempest raging, One alert in the rally and skirmish, clever to parry and foin and spar. Nay but don't be content to sit Always in one position only: many the fields for your keen-edged wit. On then, wrangle in every way, Argue, battle, be flayed and flay, Old and new from your stores display, Yea, and ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes

... were scarcely spoken, when our lips were engaged in happy concert. She held me so tight against her bosom that I could not use my hands to secure other pleasures, but I felt myself perfectly happy. After that delightful skirmish, I asked her whether we were ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... reached the end of it nearest to the city, when they took up their position in a close formation, and the native regiments fell in behind them. Clay selected twenty of the best shots from among the engineers and sent them on ahead as a skirmish line. They were ordered to fall back at once if they saw any sign of the enemy. In this order the column of four thousand men ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... hesitant way toward the door, his pride a little wounded at being defeated in the initial skirmish, his confident optimism looking forward eagerly to a more skilful attack. And then a word from Miss Hazleton brought ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... do remember, journeying hither once, On horseback, that I saw a poor lad, slain In some sad skirmish of these cruel wars; There seem'd no wound, and so I stay'd by him, Thinking he might live still. But, ever, whilst I stretch'd to reach some trifling thing for aid, His sullen head would slip from off my knee, And his damp hair to earth would wander down, ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... go take a coronet of our horse, As many lancers, and light armed knights As may suffice for such an enterprise, And place them in the grove of Caledon. With these, when as the skirmish doth increase, Retire thou from the shelters of the wood, And set upon the weakened Troyans' backs, For policy joined with chivalry Can never be ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... was awfully fond of me before—I married. He bought it in the bazaar at Peshawur, and sent it home to me just as he was starting on one of those little frontier wars the accounts of which they keep out of the English papers. And he was killed, poor dear old boy, in some footy little skirmish. And this is all I've got ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... thing to do," declared Bud. "Some of us have got to go down there and stop 'em from crossing. This is the first skirmish of ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker

... The skirmish of which Knox here gives a minute and accurate description, took place on the 22d of July 1544, when Lord Gray's partizans were repulsed with a loss of upwards of sixty men.—(Adamson's Muses Threnodie, by Cant, pp. 70, 71, 112.) Lord Gray, in October that year, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... d. 1862) was of Irish birth, and came to America in 1852. He has contributed a number of tales and poems to various periodicals, but his writings have never been collected in book form. Mr. O'Brien belonged to the New York Seventh Regiment, and died at Baltimore of a wound received in a cavalry skirmish. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... the entrance of the wood they were stopped by a few Russian stragglers, who had formed themselves into a body. These men withstood the first onset of the Poles with considerable steadiness; but after a short skirmish, they fled, or, perhaps, seemed to fly, a second time, and took refuge in the bushes, where, still regardless of orders, their enemies followed. Kosciusko, foreseeing the consequence of this rashness, ordered Thaddeus to dismount a part of his ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... have heard of Brooks' character. He was all game—Brooks was. One of those whip or die men, that are not to be found everywhere. Well, as I said, our regiment remained on the field, and finally got into a skirmish with some of the German riflemen. We knew they were German riflemen by the brass match-cases on their breasts. In this skirmish, a ball struck me on the hand, went through it, and knocked my fife clear away beyond our flank. Well, I couldn't ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson

... Hill that the first real battle of the war was fought. For Lexington had after all been a mere skirmish, only of importance because it was the first in this long and deadly war. The forts on Lake Champlain had been taken without ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... occasion to make warre against the Britains, he arriueth on the coast without resistance, the number of his ships, both armies incounter, why Caesar forbad the Romans to pursue the discomfited Britains, he repaireth his nauie, the Britains choose Cassibellane their cheefe gouernour, and skirmish afresh with their enimies, but haue ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (3 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed

... late going from bad to worse. The households of the wits concerned were up in arms; neighbourhood and police began to assert themselves. One night the trembling Dora waited hour after hour for her father. About midnight he staggered in, maddened with drink and fresh from a skirmish with the police. Finding her there waiting for him, pale and silent, he did what he had never done before under any stress of trouble—struck and swore at her. Dora sank down with a groan, and in another minute Lomax was dashing ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of the seditious part to join with them, and so were forced to fight for them. When Valerian had marched up to the place, and was near the wall, he alighted off his horse, and made those that were with him to do the same, that they might not be thought to come to skirmish with them; but before they could come to a discourse one with another, the most potent men among the seditious made a sally upon them armed; their leader was one whose name was Jesus, the son of Shaphat, the principal head of a band of robbers. Now Valerian, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... scampering and splash To snap with clamour at the crumbled bread, He had provided slyly, bent on fun: The swans meanwhile, majestic, puffed, and slow, Came proudly into action; but alas, To small result; for by mischance the spoil Through dexterous skirmish fell to meaner bills. "Our bread is all cast on the waters now, And well I'd like to know how many days It must bide there before 'tis found again!"— Some fool's dull joke repeated: good man, he, Unversed in deep text comment, never dreamed What time its Abyssinian mountain roots Swollen by fresh ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... perforated his tongue and lodged in his neck. The banditti now commanded instant surrender, which being refused, the firing was renewed. The settlers were compelled to abandon one of their number, who was preserved by Whitehead from the violence of his comrades. When an account of this skirmish was received, armed parties were dispatched from Hobart Town, and came closely on their track. They re-appeared at the house of Mr. Humphrey, and compelled his servants to tie the hands of each other: they then plundered whatever they found useful, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... transports were busily crossing Buell's army all of Sunday night. We could hear their boats ringing their bells, and hear the puff of smoke and steam from their boilers. Our regiment was the advance outpost, and we saw the skirmish line of the Federals advancing and then their main line and then their artillery. We made a good fight on Monday morning, and I was taken by surprise when the order came for us to retreat instead ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... followed swiftly. They were presently attacked by a swarm of natives in boats. The "Skraellings" were beaten off; but Thorvald, being fatally wounded in the skirmish, died, and was buried on a neighboring promontory. His companions, after passing a third winter in Vinland, returned to Greenland, having been absent three years. This, considering the circumstances, was an adventurous ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... subsequently ascertained that more than half of this number were among those who rode express to the "settlements" to carry the news of their gallant attack upon General Black Hawk and his British band. Such was the panic among the troops engaged in this skirmish, that they reported the Indian force at 1500 and even 2000 men! Black Hawk's statement has already been given, in which he places his number at forty; and one of the volunteers whose horse was lame, and who hid himself, and watched the Indians as they passed him in the pursuit and on ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... Americans are ravaging it in all directions with impunity, and armies which might have been long since annihilated by a mere guerilla war, have been suffered to march from city to city, with scarcely more resistance than a cattle-stealing skirmish. By the last intelligence, San Juan d' Ulloa has fallen, and Vera Cruz has capitulated after a siege of only three days and a half. The castle is the strongest fortification in the Western World—and, as Napoleon said of Malta, "It is lucky that it had somebody inside to open the gates for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... out upon the floor. "And here's the window open! That shows where he came in. Get your pistol and be ready to fire if he tries to jump out. I am going to skirmish for the rascal!" ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... indeed met my old colonel, who recollected that I had helped him out of the skirmish at Montereau by giving him my horse, and he had offered me bed and board at his house. I knew that the year before he had married a castle and no few farms, so that I might become permanent coat-brusher to a millionaire, which was not without its temptations. It remained ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... the others, to enliven many an indifferent moment, point the arrows of their wit at him. If he is not merely a stuffed Saracen, like those on whom the knights used to practise their lances in mock battles, but understands himself how to skirmish, to rally, and to challenge, how to wound lightly, and recover himself again, and, while he seems to expose himself, to give others a thrust home, nothing more agreeable can be found. Such a man we possessed in our friend Horn, whose name, to begin with, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... succour the Danes, king Edmund is forced to get him out of the field, the Englishmen put to their hard shifts and slaine by heapes; what noble personages were killed in this battell, of two dead bodies latelie found in the place where this hot and heauie skirmish was fought. ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed

... quartermaster's bushwhackers hung up their bill-hooks. The major and brigadier-generals went to congratulating each other on the part they had taken in the defense. At two o'clock on Wednesday morning, an advance was ordered with the two divisions of the Sixth Corps; but when the skirmish line took possession of Silver Springs, there was not a rebel in arms to be seen. General Early had made good speed during the night, and was making the best of his way across the Potomac, and home ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams

... hover and lingeringly skirmish about the frontiers of this melancholy recital, a feeling of sadness comes over me that I cannot withstand. Such a heartless massacre of hair! Such a Bartholomew's Day and Sicilian Vespers of assassinated beards! Ah! who would believe it! With intuitive sympathy I feel of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... them to put it up publicly and to write on it the name of Charon, in order to throw the glory of Pelopidas and Epameinondas into the shade; a silly exhibition of ill-feeling indeed, to compare one poor skirmish, in which Gerandas, an obscure Spartan, and some forty men fell, with the great and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... was this. He had resented, with a shower of stones, an affront offered to us by an individual boy, belonging to a cotton factory: for more than two years afterwards this became the teterrima causa of a skirmish or a battle as often as we passed the factory; and, unfortunately, that was twice a day on every day except Sunday. Our situation in respect to the enemy was as follows: Greenhay, a country house newly built by my father, at that time was ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... enough so far; vestiges, traces of Cromwell's doings in the eastern counties; a successful skirmish at Grantham, a "notable victory" at Gainsborough. In August, Manchester takes command of the Association, with Cromwell for one of his colonels; in September, first battle of Newbury, and signing of the Solemn League and Covenant at Westminster. Cromwell has written "I have a lovely ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... sufficiently attentive to both. She set off to Edinburgh to get what was awanting for his outfit, and shortly afterwards received melancholy news from the Highlands. The Independent Company into which her son was to enter had a skirmish with a party of caterans engaged in some act of spoil, and her friend the captain being wounded, and out of the reach of medical assistance, died in consequence. This news was a thunderbolt to the poor ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... disposed about the camp according to duty or fancy; some were bathing, and a detail was engaged in the work of carrying water. Suddenly the sharp report of a musket was heard, followed by another and another until the rattle of firearms told that a skirmish of considerable importance was ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis

... pen-pictures of the humblest events, the merest routine details of the life led in winning national unity and freedom, will be priceless. Not for the historian's sake alone, do I say, keep those letters, but for your sakes who receive them, and ours who write them. The next skirmish may stop our pulses forever, and our letters, full of love for you, will be our only legacy besides that of having died in a noble cause. And should we survive the war, with health and limb uninjured, or bowed with sickness or crippled with wounds, those letters will be dear mementoes to ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... the recent purchase has kept the owner from bed far on in the night. In this incidental manner is a general notion sometimes formed of the true object and tenor of a book, which is retained in the mind, stored for use, and capable of being refreshed and strengthened whenever it is wanted. In the skirmish for the Caxtons, which began the serious work in the great conflict of the Roxburghe sale, it was satisfactory to find, as I have already stated, on the authority of the great historian of the war, that Earl Spencer, the victor, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... being destroyed during the war in a skirmish which took place in their garden, and in which several men were killed, Mr. and Mrs. Dorsey removed to Texas. They afterwards returned to Louisiana; and in 1875, upon the death of Mr. Dorsey, Mrs. Dorsey made her ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... "First, though, I'd like to present you a decoration to commemorate your part in this skirmish, Wes." He took the little white feather from his hatbrim and attached it to Winfree's ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang

... that Lord Baltimore's grant covered territory belonging to them. Clayborne, a member of the Jamestown council, was especially obstinate in the matter. He had already established two trading posts in Maryland, which he prepared to defend by force of arms. A bloody skirmish ensued, in which his party was beaten. He, himself, had fled to Virginia, on the eve of battle, but being accused of treason, was sent to England for trial. He was, however, acquitted of this charge. Ten years afterward he came back, raised a rebellion, and drove ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... the south was shot in the course of a skirmish, and the revolution was now finally crushed. The numbers who paid the fullest penalty for their active discontent were very great, and the final embers of the insurrection were extinguished to ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... Mr. Fellowes returned this morning. We had a very pleasant day,—theology being excluded. In the evening my companions were again pleased to disturb my occupations; but it was only a short skirmish. Fellowes was endeavoring to enlighten his friend respecting the mysteries of "belief" and "faith," as expounded by some of his favorite writers: he contended, (making that sheer separation between "the intellectual" and "spiritual," which so many of the spiritual school affect.) ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... opened by a skirmish with the clergy. They observed the significant omission of a State church in the Declaration of Rights, and feared that they would be despoiled and the Church disestablished. The enthusiasm of the first hour had cooled. One after another, ecclesiastics attempted to obtain the recognition ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... that followed.(1673) Both ships sent out long boats to capture the rich prize as she lay stuck fast upon the harbour bar. Tomson himself formed one of the little band of volunteers. The boats were soon alongside the galeass, its huge sides towering high above them. There then ensued "a pretty skirmish for half-an-hour," wrote Tomson, "but they seemed safely ensconced in their ships, while we in our open pinnaces and far under them had nothing to shroud and cover us." Fortune at last favoured the attackers. The Spanish commander fell dead on his deck with a bullet ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... had at first promised to be only a skirmish between the outposts of the two entrenched armies, now developed into a general engagement covering a space of half a mile along the line. A reconnoitering force of Federal cavalry had ridden too close to the rifle pits of the Confederates, and, as Morrison ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple

... Swiss hotel, and good red wine grown by the convent in more genial air was not wanting. The artist traveller calmly came and took his place at table when the rest sat down, with no apparent sense upon him of his late skirmish with the completely ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... of John Hampden stands out in the history of the English-speaking people, admired and unquestioned. He was neither a great statesman, nor a great soldier; he was not a brilliant orator, nor a famous writer. He fell bravely in an unimportant skirmish at Chalgrove Field, fighting for freedom and what he believed to be right. Yet he fills a great place in the past, both for what he did and what he was, and the reason for this is of high importance. John Hampden was a gentleman, with all the advantages that the accidents ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... cared to bother about breaking such a humble citizen, malice had a handy weapon. But most of all was Mayo concerned with the view Alma Marston would take of the situation. She would either believe that he had fallen overboard in the skirmish with the attacking Polly or had deserted without warning—and in the case of a lover both suppositions were agonizing. His distress was so apparent that the girl, from her seat on the opposite transom, extended sympathy in the glances she ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... of Londonderry expected Succours arrive from England Treachery of Lundy; the Inhabitants of Londonderry resolve to defend themselves Their Character Londonderry besieged The Siege turned into a Blockade Naval Skirmish in Bantry Bay A Parliament summoned by James sits at Dublin A Toleration Act passed; Acts passed for the Confiscation of the Property of Protestants Issue of base Money The great Act of Attainder James prorogues ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... those who would explain all poetical imagination by the power of associating ideas. He is the poet of association. A proper name acts upon him like a charm. It calls up the past days, the heroes of the '41, or the skirmish of Drumclog, or the old Covenanting times, by a spontaneous and inexplicable magic. When the barest natural object is taken into his imagination, all manner of past fancies and legends crystallise around it ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... Richardson's brigade of General McDowell's army had a skirmish with General Longstreet's brigade at Blackburn's Ford, which the Rebels call the battle of Bull Run, while that which was fought on the 21st they call the battle of Manassas. General Beauregard expected that the attack ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... meane whereof the Frenchmen withdrew to Chaumount, and the Normans to Gisors. The next daie, as the Frenchmen came foorth againe, purposing to haue won Gisors, they were beaten backe by the Normans, who issued out of the towne to skirmish with them. Thus was the warre renewed betwixt these two princes; [Sidenote: Nic. Triuet.] and by setting on of Theobald earle of Blois, the matter grew to that point, that the English and French powers comming foorthwith into the ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed

... were mere skirmishes for the most part, and the silences and embarrassments that followed ended sooner or later in a "making up," tacit or definite, though once or twice this making up only re-opened the healing wound. And always each skirmish left its scar, effaced from yet another line of their lives the ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... once that he and I were to have our usual skirmish. There is one, always, whenever Faye is away any length of time. The man has a frightful temper, and a year ago shot and killed a deserter. He was acquitted by military court, and later by civil court, both courts deciding that the shooting was accidental. But the deserter was a catholic ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... could not be far away, but our aeroplanes reported no signs of it. A few weeks later an attack was made by about twenty thousand Turks on the Scottish regiment holding the line to the north of us and we had a bit of a skirmish with their flank guard. They surprised us completely; the fight was fought mostly in pyjamas on our part, but we had little difficulty in driving them off. This raid was some achievement and I take off my hat to the man who planned it. They came across ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... my dear,' said Miss Mary, as the young people seemed very near a skirmish, and the train was sweeping up. Then there was another small scuffle, for Nuttie had set her heart on the third class; but Mr. Dutton had taken second-class tickets, and was about to hand them into a carriage whence there had just emerged a very supercilious black-moustached valet, who was pulling ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to Kalea's Ford on Cheat River, where he camped on the night of the 12th. His rear was overtaken on the 13th at Carrick's Ford, and a lively engagement took place, with loss on both sides; during a skirmish at another ford about a mile from Carrick's, Garnett, while engaged in covering his retreat and directing skirmishers, was killed by ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... hew out and build wooden bridges; or, best of all, to go for the Johnnies under hot sun or heavy rain, through swamp and mire and quicksand. They marched ten miles to storm Fort McAllister. And how the cheers broke from them when the pop pop pop of the skirmish line began after we came in sight of Savannah! No man who has seen but not shared their life may talk ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... to listen to me, Mr. Walter did not share my views. A man who had written a great poem or a great play did not rank in his esteem with a man who had won a skirmish against a handful of unarmed savages, or one who had stolen a piece of land from some barbarians and annexed it to the Empire. In his heart he held the view of the English landed aristocracy, that the ordinary successful general or admiral or statesman was infinitely ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... [During this skirmish MAGGIE has stood apart. At the mention of her name they glance at one another. JOHN escorts SYBIL, but the ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie

... are broken up, and grass, Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths. But never elsewhere in one place I knew 55 So many nightingales; and far and near, In wood and thicket, over the wide grove, They answer and provoke each other's song, With skirmish and capricious passagings, And murmurs musical and swift jug jug, 60 And one low piping sound more sweet than all— Stirring the air with such a harmony, That should you close your eyes, you might almost Forget ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... that the perimeter of defense had been pushed out in a bulge at the north-west corner; the TV-screen pictured a crude breastwork of petrified tree-trunks, sandbags, mining machinery, packing-cases and odds-and-ends, upon which Wallingsby's native laborers were working under guard while a skirmish-line of Kragans had been thrown out another four or five hundred yards and were exchanging potshots with Skilkans on ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper

... is the part of France to be the experimental ground in human progress, and that all new ideas need to be watered with her blood before they can come to flower. For his own part, he refused to take part in the skirmish. While the civilized nations were cutting each other's throats he was fain to repeat the device of Antigone: "I am made for love, and not for hate."—For love and for understanding, which is another form of love. His fondness for Christophe was enough to make his ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... spinning and twisting to right and left. Both Kildare and Isaacs missed it and wheeled across to return, when a prolonged scrimmage ensued less than thirty yards from their goal. Every one played his best, and we wheeled and spun round in a way that reminded one of a cavalry skirmish. Strokes and back-strokes followed quickly, till at last I got the ball as it came rolling out between my horse's legs, and, hotly pursued, beyond the possibility of making a fair stroke, I moved away with it in ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... for our boats to get up. Facing the stream, too, was a long stockade; so that we determined on attacking the place in the rear, which, had the pirates only waited to receive us, would have caused a very interesting skirmish. They, however, decamped, leaving everything behind them. In this town we found Seriff Sahib's residence, and, among other things, all his curious and extensive wardrobe. It was ridiculous to see our Dyaks ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... Worden, we never employ them in our poultry wars. All we, who will get the supper back again, can expect, will be merely a little hot water, or a skirmish with our friends." ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... Miss Dix showed the generalship which she exhibited on many another hard fought field. She never went into battle single-handed. She always managed to have at her side the best gunners when the real battle began. In the East Cambridge skirmish, she had Rev. Robert C. Waterston, Dr. Samuel G. Howe, and Charles Sumner. Dr. Howe visited the jail and wrote an account for the Boston Advertiser. When this statement was disputed, as it was, Mr. Sumner, who had accompanied Dr. Howe, confirmed his account and added details of his own. He said ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... the Central Committee it was deprived of independent action. So it was not surprising that, long before the close of the campaign, the great fight which the Call agreed to make had dwindled to an occasional skirmish when the pleading of the women grew ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... vague and highly coloured statement to the effect that an initial skirmish had left the field in possession of the rivermen, in spite of the sheriff and a large posse, but that troops were being rushed to the spot, and that this "high-handed defiance of authority" would undoubtedly soon be suppressed. It concluded truthfully with the statement ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... other points, and I lay thinking of the skirmish that had played beneath the surface of their banter. Yes, the joke, as they put it, was on Steve. He had lost one point in the game to them. They were playing for names. He, being a chivalrous thief, was playing to hide names. They could only, among several likely confederates, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... Terceira business, and delivered a very poor speech; but I like his speaking—it is so much to the point, no nonsense and verbiage about it, and he says strongly and simply what he has to say. The other night on Greece there was a very brisk skirmish between Palmerston and Peel, and the former spoke, they say, remarkably well; the latter, as usual, was in ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... be thought that undue prominence has been given to an affair which after all was one in which a few thousands only took part—little more than a skirmish, perhaps, judged by European standards. It has been done partly because this was the first time most of us had been under fire, but chiefly because the battle was so typical of many ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett









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