"Corsair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that rash act have recoiled on us, and yet, at the same time, with this most patriotic and prudent deed before us, a wilder measure than even that was adopted, and it was quelled only by force. You all remember the events. In February, '33, Eugene Brifault, in his 'Corsair,' alluded jestingly to the mysterious pregnancy of the mother of Henry V., Duke of Bordeaux, as did every one, she then being imprisoned at Baye because of her prior conspiracy to place her son on the throne, and her secret marriage in Italy being unrevealed. The Legitimists of 'Le Revenant' challenged; ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... Constantinople in 1479 had definitely reduced the position of Venice in the Levant from an independent Power to a tolerated ally. The growth of the Ottoman sea power had been alarming enough, but it became a distinct menace to the Christian Powers of the Mediterranean when the Corsair chiefs of the North African coast became Turkish vassals. All the African coast from Morocco to Suez, the coast of Asia Minor, and the European coast from the Bosphorus to Albania (with the exception of a few islands), were in Turkish hands. From 1475, ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... was born at Aviles in Asturias on the 15th of February 1519. His family were gentry, and he was one of nineteen brothers and sisters. At the age of fourteen he ran away to sea, and was engaged till he was thirty in a life of adventure as a corsair. In 1549 during peace between France and Spain he was commissioned by the emperor Charles V. to clear the north coast of Spain and the Canaries of French pirates. In 1554 he was appointed captain-general of the "flota" or convoy which carried the trade between Spain and America. The appointment ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... the viceroys, a first-rate engineer paid it an annual visit, to ascertain its condition, and to consider its best mode of defence, in case of an attack. In 1806, however, Vera Cruz was sacked by the English corsair, Nicholas Agramont, incited by one Lorencillo, who had been condemned to death for murder in Vera Cruz, and had escaped to Jamaica. Seven millions of dollars were carried off, besides three hundred persons of both sexes, whom the pirates abandoned on the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... de Varennes at Avignon, Berwick's offer of an escort, and the Countess's dread of the Pyrenees, are all facts, as well as her embarkation in the Genoese tartane bound for Barcelona, and its capture by the Algerine corsair commanded by a Dutch renegade, who treated her well, and to whom she ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the lurid lights of the French Revolution with Scaramouche, or the brilliant buccaneering days of Peter Blood, or the adventures of the Sea-Hawk, the corsair, will now welcome with delight a turn in Restoration London with the always masterful ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... corsair, and probably a pirate, he thought no more of spitting a Christian on his dagger than I did of spitting on the ground," continued Schinner. "So that was how the land lay. The old wretch had millions, and was hideous with the loss of an ear some pacha had cut off, ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... quite a long diary filled with dittos. Also, this movement of Mr. and Mrs. Grandcourt had been mentioned in "the newspaper;" so that altogether this new phase of Gwendolen's exalted life made a striking part of the sisters' romance, the book-devouring Isabel throwing in a corsair or two to make an adventure that ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... and pacific in character, and having a great aptitude for agriculture. From these characteristics they have concluded that they are probably descended from early Chinese traders, emigrants, or castaways, or are derived from the remnants of the pirate band of the Chinese corsair Limahon (Lin-fung), which fled into the mountains of Pangasinan after his defeat ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... be derived from the system, had faithfully set himself to effect a reformation of its abuses after his return from France. The Seigneur de Dolhain, who, like many other refugee nobles, had acquired much distinction in this roving corsair life, had for a season acted as Admiral for the Prince. He had, however, resolutely declined to render any accounts of his various expeditions, and was now deprived of his command in consequence. Gillain de Fiennes, Seigneur de Lumbres, was appointed to succeed him. At the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Marino Faliero, Sardanapalus—the Deformed Transformed ... The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the mortal struggle with Spain offering a welcome refuge to spendthrifts like himself. In common with many a banished noble of ancient birth and broken fortunes, the riotous student became a successful corsair, and it is probable that his prizes were made as well among the friends as the enemies of his country. He amassed in a short time one hundred thousand crowns—no contemptible fortune in those days. He assisted La Marck in the memorable attack upon Brill, but behaved badly and took ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... wife, 'in perfect heaps. I had no relation to object or be offended, on the score of station; for I had no relation. I have never had anybody belonging to me but my guardian, and him, Feeder, I have always considered as a Pirate and a Corsair. Therefore, you know it was not likely,' said Mr Toots, 'that I should ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... vacated for the King's convenience by the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir G. Carteret, who had removed to the lower ward. S. Aubin, on the other horn of the bay, was the seat of the naval power; here lived the families of the officers of the corsair-squadron then constituting the Royal Navy. The rest of the King's following was billetted on farm-houses in the parishes nearest to the town. Yet, as a warning that all was not their own, four frigates and two ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... that," Geoffrey agreed. "However, I see there are some thirty soldiers forward on their way to join one of the regiments in Naples, so we ought to be able to beat off any corsair ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... as a lyric poet. For spirit and perfection of form what could be more perfect than the "Cancin del Pirata"? Like Byron in the "Corsair," he extols the lawless liberty of the buccaneer. Byron was here his inspiration rather than Hugo. The "Chanson de Pirates" cannot stand comparison with either work. But Espronceda's indebtedness to Byron was in this case very slight. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... had now assembled in the halls appropriated to dancing; and these were arrayed in every variety of fancy and picturesque costume possible to be conceived. The grave Turk, the stately Spanish cavalier, the Italian bandit and the Grecian corsair, mingled together without reserve;—and the fairer portion of creation was represented by fairies, nuns, queens, peasant ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... hopes of getting a cut at you. Now, where we cannot succeed by force, we must employ stratagem; and I intend to go on board and to inform them that the Sea Hawk is an Austrian ship-of-war, anxious to protect merchantmen from the attacks of the corsair Zappa, and to revenge herself on him for his capture of one of their brigs of war, of which they will have heard. If I find them unprepared and unsuspicious of us, we will at once run alongside and take possession; ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... commerce and the President had sent a small squadron for protection. A ship of this squadron, the schooner Enterprise, had fallen in with a Tripolitan man-of-war and after a fight lasting three hours had forced the corsair to strike her colors. But since war had not been declared and the President's orders were to act only on the defensive, the crew of the Enterprise dismantled the captured vessel and let her go. Would Congress, asked the President, take under consideration the advisability ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... the Greek insurgents 1823, and died of a fever in their cause of freedom from the Turks. Among his works are "Hours of Idleness," "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," "Childe Harold," "The Giaour," "The Corsair," "The Prisoner of Chillon," "Cain," ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... on to a famous apologue. England is a frigate, attacked by a corsair of immense strength and size. The rigging is cut, there is water in the hold, men are dropping off very fast, the peril is extreme. How do you think the captain (whom we will call Perceval) acts? Does he call all hands on deck and talk to them of king, country, glory, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... man, Eliphalet Simmons, had brought his schooner from the Mediterranean, and he told in a manner as brief and dry as his own log how he had outsailed one Barbary corsair by day, and by changing his course had tricked another in the night. But the voyage had been most profitable, and Master Jonathan duly entered the amount of gain in an account book, with a reward of ten pounds to Captain Simmons, five pounds to ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... coast of Majorca some fifteen miles from Palma; from here he commanded the route of the Spaniards from their country to the African coast, and it was against this nation that he felt a great bitterness owing to recent events. Eagerly did the corsair and his men watch for the Spanish ships, the heavier vessels lying at anchor, but the light, swift galleys ranging and questing afar so that none might be missed. Very soon the vigilance of the Moslems was rewarded by the ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... physique when he went away, but his features had acquired greater firmness, his shoulders were broader, and it was a far cry from the tall, studious-looking boy who had left Paris two years before, for Ismailia, to this handsome, bronzed corsair, with ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... should here at the outset acknowledge my extreme indebtedness to those chronicles. Without them, indeed, it were impossible to reconstruct the life of that Cornish gentleman who became a renegade and a Barbary Corsair and might have become Basha of Algiers—or Argire, as his lordship terms it—but for certain matters which are ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... of the museum are a number of large exhibits. These include the Boeing B-52B jet bomber that dropped the United States' last air burst H-bomb in 1962, and a 280-mm (11 inches) Atomic cannon, once America's most powerful field artillery. Also found in this area is a Navy TA-7C (a modified A-7B) Corsair II fighter-bomber, a veteran of the Vietnam War. Many other nuclear weapons systems, rockets, and missiles ...
— Trinity [Atomic Test] Site - The 50th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb • The National Atomic Museum
... the "Gentleman's Magazine" for 1750 (vol. xx., p. 42), we read, "The Phoenix, Captain Carberry, of Bristol, was taken on Christmas eve by an Algerine corsair off the rock of Lisbon, on pretence that his pass was not good, and ordered for Algiers with an officer and six other Turks; but in the passage Captain Carberry with three English sailors and a boy recovered the vessel, after flinging the Turkish officer and two other Turks overboard, and brought ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... June, while chasing a Barbary corsair, a Christian slave, who happened to be at the helm, ran the corsair on board the Dutch vice-admiral, and immediately he and other slaves took the opportunity of leaping on board to escape from slavery. The captain of the corsair, who happened to be a Dutch renegado, followed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... words suffice the secret soul to show, For truth denies all eloquence to woe. The Corsair, Canto III. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... mean to say you have not as yet exhibited these qualities. The hooks with which you have fished for praise in the ocean of literature have not been garnished with live bait, and none of us can get a bite without it. How few read 'Comus' who have the 'Corsair' by heart! Why? Because the former, which is almost dark with the excessive bright of its own glory, is deficient in human passions and emotions, while the latter possesses ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... STORY. Landolfo Ruffolo, grown poor, turneth corsair and being taken by the Genoese, is wrecked at sea, but saveth himself upon a coffer full of jewels of price and being entertained in Corfu by a ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... takes life: Standing on the wooden boom of the ancient port, his scarred doublet rusted by wind and brine, his old back bellied like a sail, the pirate is shaking his fist at the frigate that passes in the distance; and leaning over the tangle of tarred beams, as he used to on the nettings of his corsair ship, he predicts his race's eternal hatred ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... anchor is dragging in his mud, and the man who violates the proprieties, like our brave Portland brothers, when they jumped on board the first steamer they could reach, cut her cable, and bore down on the corsair, with a habeas corpus act that lodged twenty buccaneers ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ten millions sterling in gold and silver, a treasure which had been accumulating since the time of Barbarossa. [Footnote: A famous corsair of the sixteenth century.] He claimed 400,000L as his own, and was allowed to carry it away. The French enquired about the jewels of the Regency. The Dey said there were no jewels but those which belonged to his wives, and la galanterie Francaise ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... viewed by evening from the sea, promised a magnificent prospect. The girls, however, were so well pleased upon the bark, that they continually entreated my brother to go farther out upon the sea. Mustapha, however, yielded reluctantly, because a Corsair had been seen, for several ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... dated 8th April 1537, written by Gonzalo de Guzman to the Empress, furnishes us with some interesting details of the exploits of an anonymous French corsair in that year. In November 1536 this Frenchman had seized in the port of Chagre, on the Isthmus of Darien, a Spanish vessel laden with horses from San Domingo, had cast the cargo into the sea, put the crew on shore and sailed away with his prize. A month or two later he appeared off the ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... a solemn good-bye hours before anybody else has begun to move. Twenty minutes at least must have elapsed ere Dick found himself in a dainty outrigger with a long pair of sculls, fairly launched on the bosom of the Thames—more than time for the corsair, if corsair he should be, to have sailed far out of sight with false, consenting Maud in the direction ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... by a venomous serpent, and her life was saved only through the devotion of her black nurse, who sucked alike poison and death from the wound. Another time, as she was on a voyage with her parents, the vessel was in danger of being captured by a corsair; and a third time a powerful whirlwind carried into the waves of the sea the little Francoise, who was walking on the shore, but a large black dog, her companion and favorite, sprang after her, seized her dress with its teeth, and carried the child back to the shore, where sobbing ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... of Dr. Antonio de Morga to the governor, in which he gives an account of all that happened in the expedition against the Dutch corsair, presented as soon as he returned ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... Pelican through the ice-floes of Hudson Straits. He was attacked by three English merchantmen, with one hundred and twenty guns against his forty-four. One of the English ships escaped, one Iberville sank with all on board, one he captured. That autumn the hardy corsair was in France with a great booty from the furs which ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... haven! In cruelty and lust, in the faith of little children and the courage of old demi-gods, they went like homing pigeons; and not a soul, from him who gave command to him who, far aloft, looked out upon the deep, recked or cared that another age would call him pirate or corsair, raising brow and shoulder over ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... of, Cousin Mercy, save for a few shot holes in her hull, and a good many patches on her side—the work of a Moorish corsair, with whom we had a sharp brush by ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... a corsair who had captured him in a garden on the coast near Trapani, and along with him a damsel, whose name I never thought of asking, though the corsair often spoke to me in praise of her beauty. Ricardo remained hero some days with ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... with a lilac dove This Corsair desperate and daft? Behold the conning tower above The big stern chasers pointing aft! This is not he that saved mankind With pards and pigs from tempests blind, But rather he that forged a flood, And not of water but of blood, And filled with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... The corsair at first did not keep her course direct for the ship, but rowed once or twice round her, firing as she did so. Then, apparently satisfied that no great precaution need be observed with a feebly-manned ship in so great a strait as the Rose, they set up a wild cry of "Allah!" ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... with the adventures of one Landolfo Rufolo of Ravello, "who, not content with his great store, but anxious to make it double, was near losing all he had, and his life also." The novel proceeds to relate how this member of a wealthy and respected family turned corsair, after losing all his capital in a mercantile speculation in Cyprus; how he, in his turn, was robbed of his ill-gotten gains on the high seas by some thievish merchants of Genoa; and how Landolfo, after passing ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... said Friedel; "but there haunts me evermore the description of the kindly German chained between the decks of the Corsair's galley. Once and again have I dreamt thereof. And, Ebbo, recollect the prediction that so fretted thee. Might not yon dark- cheeked woman have had some knowledge of the ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... left the island of Madeira with his six ships and arrived at the island of Gomera[320-3] the following Tuesday. At this island he found a French corsair with a French vessel and two large ships which the corsair had taken from the Castilians, and when the Frenchman saw the six vessels of the Admiral he left his anchors and one vessel and fled with the other vessel. ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... suggestion fired the corsair's blood. "Dy'ar think we daresent," said Hickory, desperately, but with an uneasy glance at Polly. "I'll show ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... lover, to whom for many years Miss Cornelia's heart was constant as the moon, was a tall, dark, mysterious man, with a heavy beard and glittering eyes, who, there is every reason to suspect, was either a corsair, a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Greece before the time of Constantine; he had not found any evidence in favor of it. He was a short, thick-set man with a large head and white Medusa-like hair; but such an eye as his was never seen in an Anglo-Saxon face. It reminded you at once of Byron's Corsair, and suggested contingencies such as find no place in quiet, law-abiding New England,—the possibility of sudden and terrible concentration. His clothing had been long since out of fashion, and he always wore a faded cloth cap, such as no student would dare to put on. He lived ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... with Russia, Austria, Portugal, Naples, Sardinia, Genoa and Malta. Its first depredation on American commerce was committed on the 25th of July, 1785, when the schooner Maria, Stevens master, owned in Boston, was seized off Cape St. Vincent by a corsair and carried into Algiers. Five days later the ship Dauphin of Philadelphia, Captain O'Brien, was taken and carried into the same port. Other captures quickly followed, so that at the time of Barlow's mission there were one hundred and twenty American citizens in the Algerine prisons, exclusive ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... green; We grasp our firelocks tight, for war Is threatening, and we see our Queen. And 'Will the churls last out till we Have duly hardened bones and thews For scouring leagues of swamp and sea Of braggart mobs and corsair crews?' We ask; we fear not scoff or smile At meek attire of blue and grey, For the proud wrath that thrills our isle Gives faith and force to this array. So great a charm is England's right, That hearts enlarged together flow, And each man rises up a knight To work the ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... and has associations with works of a very different kind, such as the fictions of Richardson and Sterne. In England, Scott became the foremost representative of "Goetzism," and Byron of "Wertherism." The pessimistic, sardonic heroes of "Manfred," "Childe Harold," and "The Corsair" were the latest results of the "Il Penseroso" literature, and their melodramatic excesses ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... romantic light thieves and murderers like Dick Turpin and Claude Duval. That is to say, they do precisely the same thing as Scott's 'Ivanhoe,' Scott's 'Rob Roy,' Scott's 'Lady of the Lake,' Byron's 'Corsair,' Wordsworth's 'Rob Roy's Grave,' Stevenson's 'Macaire,' Mr. Max Pemberton's 'Iron Pirate,' and a thousand more works distributed systematically as prizes and Christmas presents. Nobody imagines that an admiration of Locksley in 'Ivanhoe' will lead a boy to shoot Japanese arrows ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... that Guido de Labazarris, a royal officer, entered upon those duties, and was obeyed. He, with much prudence, valor, and tact, continued the conversion and pacification of the islands, and governed them, and Morga states that in his time there came the corsair Limahon from China, with seventy large ships and many men-at-arms, against Manila. He entered the city, and having killed the master of the camp Martin de Goiti, in his house, along with other Spaniards who were in it, he went against the fortress in which the Spaniards, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... begin by saying that he represents, in clear lineaments, the nobleman, the traveller, the poet, and the debauchee, of the beginning of the nineteenth century. In all his works he unconsciously depicts himself. He is in turn Childe Harold, Lara, the Corsair, and Don Juan. He affected to despise the world's opinion so completely that he has made himself appear worse than he really was—more profane, more intemperate, more licentious. It is equally true that this tendency, added to the fact that he was a ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... was, on his mother's side, of African extraction, a circumstance which perhaps accounts for the southern fervour of his imagination. His great-grandfather, Abraham Petrovitch Hannibal, was seized on the coast of Africa when eight years of age by a corsair, and carried a slave to Constantinople. The Russian Ambassador bought and presented him to Peter the Great who caused him to be baptized at Vilnius. Subsequently one of Hannibal's brothers made his way to Constantinople and thence to St. Petersburg for ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... of the resolution of the Audiencia of the Filipinas in respect to the entrance of the Dutch corsair among the islands."] ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... imagine the Corsair, whirling in a rapid redowa with Medora," Miss Oleander afterward said, "you have Mr. Walraven and myself. There were about eighty Guinares gazing enviously on, ready to poniard me, every one of them, if they dared, and ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... than did Alexander." From the perusal of Rycaut's folio of Turkish history in childhood, the noble and impassioned bard of our times retained those indelible impressions which gave life and motion to the "Giaour," "the Corsair," and "Alp." A voyage to the country produced the scenery. Rycaut only communicated the impulse to a mind susceptible of the poetical character; and without this Turkish history we should still ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... a day's voyage from the coast of Spain. As they were breezing along with all sails set, over a moonlit sea, they saw a large ship appear in the distance. It turned out to be a French corsair from Rochelle out for plunder, for when it came closer it suddenly fired two guns that took terrible effect and wrecked their vessel. As the ship began to sink, they begged to be taken aboard the corsair, to which the captain was not averse. Once ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the lake and have The bitterness of the great sea. But now, Alas! my sweetness is a little drop; My bitterness, a flood. For the cold winter, The great corsair, has come with the north wind, Death's king. My azure blood has slowly flowed Out of my veins and gone to bring new life To the deep seas. A shroud weed-woven ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... triumliterarum [Lat.], pilferer, rifler, filcher^, plagiarist. spoiler, depredator, pillager, marauder; harpy, shark [Slang], land shark, falcon, mosstrooper^, bushranger^, Bedouin^, brigand, freebooter, bandit, thug, dacoit^; pirate, corsair, viking, Paul Jones^, buccaneer, buccanier^; piqueerer^, pickeerer^; rover, ranger, privateer, filibuster; rapparee^, wrecker, picaroon^; smuggler, poacher; abductor, badger [Slang], bunko man, cattle thief, chor^, contrabandist^, crook, hawk, holdup man, hold-up [U.S.], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... seriousness. But fun shall be had with the aid of His Highness below. The madder the world, the madder the fun. And the mixing in it of another element, which it has to beguile us—romance—is not at all bad cookery. Poetic romance is delusion—a tale of a Corsair; a poet's brain, a bottle of gin, and a theatrical wardrobe. Comic romance is about us everywhere, alive ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the galley—his own galley had he but known it—with illustrations borrowed from the "Bride of Abydos." He pointed the experiences of his hero with quotations from "The Corsair," and threw in deep and desperate moral reflections from "Cain" and "Manfred," expecting me to use them all. Only when the talk turned on Longfellow were the jarring cross-currents dumb, and I knew that Charlie was speaking the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... revenge the insult showed upon what a hollow foundation this savage power rested. The army landed without opposition. In five days it swept before it in hopeless rout the wreck of the Algerine forces. In three weeks it breached and captured the corsair's strongholds. The history of the French occupation of Algeria is a tale of unceasing martial exploits, by which France has extended her empire six hundred miles along the shores of the Mediterranean, and inland fifty miles,—two hundred miles, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Francisco Tello, seeing that this corsair was making incursions among the islands, according to the information given him by certain captains and soldiers whom he had sent by land along the coasts of the island of Luzon, in order to prevent the enemy from landing men and from injuring ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... Bombay, in the kingdom of Decan, a small island, with a very convenient harbour, above five-and-forty leagues to the south of Surat. The town is very populous; but the soil is barren, and the climate unhealthy; and the commerce was rendered very precarious by the neighbourhood of the famous corsair Angria, until his port of Geria was taken, and his fortifications demolished. The English company likewise carry on some traffic at Dabul, about forty leagues further to the south, in the province of Cuncan. In the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... him; he beheld the primitive life of nature, the real modesty of naked chastity, the joys of an idleness natural to mankind, a peaceful fate by a slow river of sweet water under a plantain tree that bears its pleasant manna without the toil of man. Then all at once he became a corsair, investing himself with the terrible poetry that Lara has given to the part: the thought came at the sight of the mother-of-pearl tints of a myriad sea-shells, and grew as he saw madrepores redolent of the sea-weeds and the storms of ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... and entered the great inland sea. We coasted down its shores, touching first at Barcelona, for we were not then at war with Spain, and then at Marseilles, from which port we struck across for Sicily, intending to call at Palermo. But on the way there we fell in with a Barbary corsair. Our captain was a brave man, and determined to fight to the last, as he had a very valuable cargo on board. The fight began early in the morning, and the pirate tried at first to ram our ship with his sharp beak; but the wind was good, and our ship was so nimble, and answered her ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... in command of the Philadelphia, and was detailed to help in blockading Tripoli. His companion vessel was sent in pursuit of a corsair, so that the Philadelphia was left alone to perform blockade duty. On the last day of October, 1803, Captain Bainbridge observed a Tripolitan vessel trying to make port. He gave chase, but the coast was dangerous, abounding with shoals and reefs, ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... should set up a religious republic. Serried closely together on land, they had a strange mixed following on the sea. Lair of heretics, or shelter of martyrs, La Rochelle was ready to protect the outlaw. The corsair, of course, would be a Protestant, actually armed perhaps by sour old Jeanne of Navarre—the ship he fell across, of course, Spanish. A real Spanish ship of war, gay, magnificent, was gliding even then, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... frigate attacked by a corsair of immense strength and size, rigging cut, masts in danger of coming by the board, four foot water in the hold, men dropping off very fast; in this dreadful situation how do you think the Captain acts (whose name shall be Perceval)? ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... pair. The very last bet made on the day I opened the book was that Queen Victoria would make Lord Salisbury a duke, that a certain gentleman known as S. S. could find his own door in St. James's Square, blindfold, from the club, and that Corsair ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to its sense. On some pane in every inn-window there was a scrap of Byron; and in young ladies' portfolios there were portraits of the poet, recognizable, through all bad drawing and distortion, by the cast of the beautiful features and the Corsair style. Where a popularity like this sprang up, there must be sufficient reason for it to cause it to involve more or less all orders of minds; and the wisest and most experienced men, and the most thoroughly trained ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Clieu was a merchantman, and many were the trials that beset passengers and crew. Narrowly escaping capture by a corsair of Tunis, menaced by a violent tempest that threatened to annihilate them, they finally encountered a calm that proved more appalling than either. The supply of drinking water was well nigh exhausted, and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... with fleet of ice Sailed the corsair Death; Wild and fast blew the blast, And the east-wind was ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... near by, for provisions. This vessel had been taken from this city by order of Guido de Lavezares, in order to explore the province of Cagayan, to which I sent Don Luis de Sahajossa this last winter. When the corsair saw the galliot, he lowered his small boats and made an assault upon it; but, although the galliot was badly equipped, the soldiers defended themselves bravely from the attack of the small boats. The natives on the coast, say that a bronze falcon weighing fourteen quintals was fired five ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... an admirable thing chance is!" D'Artagnan pronounced these words with an indefinable tone of feigned bonhomie, for he knew very well that the victim of pirates was an old corsair, and had engaged him in consequence of that knowledge. But D'Artagnan never said more than there was need to say, in order to leave people in doubt. He paid himself with the explanation, and welcomed the effect, without appearing to ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... further attention to the absence of Bettina or the return of the cashier's wife. At the beginning of 1827 the newspapers rang with the trial of Charles d'Estourny, who was found guilty of cheating at cards. The young corsair escaped into foreign parts without taking thought of Mademoiselle Mignon, who was of little value to him since the failure of the bank. Bettina heard of his infamous desertion and of her father's ruin almost at the same time. She ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... steered for the Philippines, thence southward through the East Indies to the Indian Ocean, and past Good Hope, back to Plymouth, where he came to anchor on September 26, 1580. Bells were set ringing. Post went spurring to London with word that Drake, the corsair, who had turned the Spanish world upside down, had come home. For a week the little world of England gave itself up to feasting. Ballads rang with the fame of Drake. His name was on every tongue. One of his first acts was to visit his old ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... won't try it. As I told him he might just as well lanch right out on Jonesville creek as a corsair, "and I've always said," sez I, "that never would I ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... building and rigging a ship, or sailing and fighting her, they could do everything that the most skilful seamen of the age could do. As was said half a century later of La Bourdonnais, himself a true corsair in spirit, their knowledge in mechanics rendered them capable of building a ship from the keel; their skill in navigation, of conducting her to any part of the globe; and their courage, of fighting against any equal force. Their lives were a continual alternation between idleness and extreme ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... to be deplored that pirates should be able to exact ransom by threatening to make their captives walk the plank. But to ransom a captive from pirates has always been held a humane and Christian act; and it would be absurd to charge the payer of the ransom with corrupting the virtue of the corsair. This, we seriously think, is a not unfair illustration of the relative position of Impey, Hastings, and the people of India. Whether it was right in Impey to demand or to accept a price for powers which, if they really belonged to him, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Guatimotzin, and was answerable to the soldiers both for what he had appropriated to his own use, and for that which had been sent to Spain as a present to his majesty and had been captured by Florin the French corsair. A long list of other demands followed, on every one of which he was found liable, and his property was sold under executions for the payment. At this time likewise, Juan Suarez the brother of Donna Catalina, the first wife of Cortes, charged him with her murder, offering to produce ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... have recognized the elegant and effeminate clubman, in this corsair with broad shoulders, a skin the color of tan, with very red lips, who rolled a little in his walk; who seemed to be stifled in his black dress-coat, but who still retained the distinguished manners and bearing ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... before, he was not magnetic; and magnetism, I thought, was the chief quality she would have demanded in a man. Betty was one of those ardent, vivid girls, with an intense capacity for hero-worship, and I would have supposed that something more in the nature of a plumed knight or a corsair of the deep would have been her ideal. But, of course, if there is a branch of modern industry where the demand is greater than the supply, it is the manufacture of knights and corsairs; and nowadays a girl, however flaming her aspirations, has to take the ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... beloved wife of Conrad, the corsair. When Conrad was taken captive by the Pacha Seyd, Medora sat day after day expecting his return, and feeling the heart-anguish of hope deferred. Still he returned not, and Medora died. In the mean time, Gulnare, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... our ship, so that we could get back to land, and that I might find some other and safer way to continue my voyage to Spain.... Everything taken away from the ship save my belongings, which captain Diaguillo ordered to let me out of a generosity not often to be found with a corsair, he bade us fare-well thanking us for the good ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... the steamer 'Corsair' arrived from Melbourne, bringing many passengers, one of whom was John Reeve, who took up a station at Snake Ridge, and purchased the block of land known as Reeve's Survey. The new settlers also brought a number of horses, and Norman ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... dollars, and demanded more. The other Barbary powers threatened to make common cause with him. Anticipating trouble, Jefferson had sent a small squadron to the Mediterranean even before the dramatic act of the Pasha at the American consulate; and hostilities began on August 1 with the capture of a corsair by the schooner Enterprise. Therewith Jefferson's dreams of a navy for coast defense only vanished ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... if, in the matter of the MAY-FLOWER voyage, Captain Jones did as he was bidden. Thus much of the crafty Master of the MAY-FLOWER, Captain Thomas Jones,—his Christian name and identity both apparently beyond dispute, —whom we first know in the full tide of his piratical career, in the corsair LION in Eastern seas; whom we next find as a prisoner in London for his misconduct in the East, but soon Master of the cattle-ship FALCON on her Virginia voyage; whom we greet next—and best—as Admiral of the Pilgrim fleet, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... A corsair has saved the shipwrecked and sold them as slaves to the Emir of Tunis. Though poor and in captivity they do not lose courage and are happy that they are permitted to ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... strange story following, which may be taken for a fiction of the poet, is justified by a true relation in Spon's Voyages. Vaillant (who wrote the History of the Syrian Kings as it is to be found on medals) coming from the Levant, where he had been collecting various coins, and being pursued by a corsair of Sallee, swallowed down twenty gold medals. A sudden bourasque freed him from the rover, and he got to land with them in his belly. On his road to Avignon, he met two physicians, of whom he demanded assistance. ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... of the route; for we are informed that one of the adventures would have proved exceedingly profitable, had not their ships, on their return across the Caspian, with Persian raw silk, wrought silks of many kinds, galls, carpets, Indian spices, turquois stones, &c., been plundered by Corsair pirates, to the value of about 40,000l. The final abandonment of this route, in the eighteenth century, arose partly from the wars in Persia, but principally from the extension of India commerce, which ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... hundreds of honest families. But in 1543 a second Joan of Arc was raised up by Providence to deliver the Nicois in the person of the still popular heroine, Catterina Segurana. Francis I. had recently scandalized Christendom by allying himself with the famous Mohammedan corsair, Barbarossa of Algiers with a view of reconquering Nice, which he considered the key of Italy. Accordingly, one fine morning three hundred vessels belonging to the Algerine pirate entered the neighboring port of Villefranche, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... greater portion of the "Harold" is obviously, in its coolness and neatness and lightness, the work of one who was unwilling to dishevel himself in the cause of expression, who outlined his sensations reticently rather than effusively, and stood always a little apart. The "Corsair" overture has not the wild, rich balladry of that of the "Flying Dutchman," perhaps. But it is full of the clear and quivering light of the Mediterranean. It is, in the words of Hans von Buelow, "as terse as the report of a pistol." And it flies swiftly before ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... {27a} The "splendid old corsair," E. J. T., is best known perhaps as the grim and grizzled pilot in Millais' great picture (now in the Tate) of the North-west Passage. Trelawny and Borrow are linked together as men whose mental powers were strong but whose ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... profound, metaphysical or analytical. But as a mere narrative poet few men whose judgment is of value will deny Scott the next place to Homer. As a poet he created an epoch. It filled no great space in point of time, but we owe to Sir Walter's impetus 'he Giaour,' 'he Corsair,' the 'Bride of Abydos.' In his second character of antiquarian romancist, he awoke the elder Dumas, and such a host of imitators, big and little, as no writer ever had at his heels before or since. When he turned to Scottish character he made Galt, and Robert Louis ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... Byron," said Margaret. "He used to read me bits of 'Childe Harold' and the 'Corsair;' I liked them, and I always loved the 'Assyrian.' But—I thought you might like something bright and cheerful to-day, Mrs. Peyton, so I brought Austin Dobson. ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... their eyes. The centre of their line was occupied by the huge galley of Ali Pasha, their leader. Their right was commanded by Mahomet Sirocco, viceroy of Egypt; their left by Uluch Ali, dey of Algiers, the most redoubtable of the corsair lords ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... the city. But this period from 1811 to 1815 was also one of extraordinary intellectual fertility. In rapid succession he gave to the press poems and romances,—'The Giaour,' 'The Bride of Abydos,' 'The Corsair,' 'Lara,' the 'Hebrew Melodies,' 'The Siege of Corinth,' and 'Parisina.' Some of the 'Hebrew Melodies' are unequaled in lyric fire. The romances are all taking narratives, full of Oriental passion, vivid descriptions of scenery, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... them, and after floating at sea for seven days they were picked up by a Corsair. He was so struck by their beauty that he altered his course, and took them home to his wife, who had no children. She was transported with joy when he placed them in her hands. They admired together the wonderful stars, the chains of gold that could not be taken off their necks, and their ...
— The Frog Prince and Other Stories - The Frog Prince, Princess Belle-Etoile, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous
... bringing succor to the crushed and ruined townspeople. In every battle with Turk or Moor, the Knights were among the foremost; and, as ever before, their galleys were the aid of the peaceful merchant, and the terror of the corsair. Indeed, they were nearer Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, the great nests of these Moorish pirates, and were better able to threaten them, and thwart their cruel descents, than when so much farther eastward; and the Mahometan power found them ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ladrone, desperado, buccaneer, freebooter, pirate, corsair, raider, burglar, footpad, highwayman, depredator, spoiler, despoiler, forager, pillager, plunderer, marauder, myrmimdon>. (With this group compare the ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... distinguished himself at the siege of Tunis, and later was taken prisoner by a Barbary corsair, and was kept in cruel captivity for five years at Algiers, It was customary with the Algerines to treat their prisoners according to their supposed rank and expected ransom. The avarice of the masters sometimes alleviated the lot of the Christian slaves; but, unfortunately ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... when I older grew, Joining a corsair's crew, O'er the dark sea I flew With the marauders. Wild was the life we led; Many the souls that sped, Many the hearts that bled, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of neutrality forbidding Frenchmen to take commissions from either belligerent "for the armament of vessels of war or to accept letters of marque, or to cooperate in any way whatsoever in the equipment or arming of any vessel of war or corsair of either belligerent." He did not intend to abandon publicly this cautious attitude—at least, not for the present. And while Slidell at Paris was completely taken in, the cooler head of A. Dudley ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... other poets of his century as a great creative artist, that his canvas is crowded with new and original images, additions to already existing types of poetic workmanship. It has been said that Byron could only represent himself under various disguises, that Childe Harold and The Corsair, Lara and Manfred and Don Juan, are variants of a single personality, the egotist who is at war with his fellows, the generous but nefarious sentimentalist who sins and suffers and yet is to be pitied for his suffering. None the less, with whatever limitations as artist or moralist, he ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... on society was like the bursting of a dynamite cartridge before every individual. Linden capitulated! Linden married! It was incredible. And to whom had he struck the bold corsair flag which had so long been the terror of husbands? To Kaethe von Markwald, in whom nothing piquant could be discovered which would be likely specially to attract a blase man of the world! She was beautiful, certainly, but he had passed by many handsomer ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... really loved his wife; and though he has been absurdly accused of marrying for revenge, we must suspect that he married in part for a settlement. On the other hand, it is not unfair to say that she was fascinated by a name, and inspired by the philanthropic zeal of reforming a literary Corsair. Both were disappointed. Miss Milbanke's fortune was mainly settled on herself; and Byron, in spite of plentiful resolutions gave little sign of reformation. For a considerable time their life, which, after the "treacle moon," as the bridegroom called it, spent at Halnaby, near ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... no cause to be ashamed of her frequent visits to the Owl's Nest, for old Tabus had no equal as a leech and a prophetess, and the corsair family, of which she was the female head, stood in high repute among the Biamites. People bore them no ill-will because they practised piracy; many of their race pursued the same calling, and the sailors made common cause ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... husband whilst she lived. He is also my very good friend, and, besides that, secretary to that most noble lord Francois de Scepeaux, Marshal de Vieilleville. Carloix is a discreet man; but I gathered enough from him to guess that it would be safer for a Christaudin to be a prisoner with a Barbary corsair than be in Paris now, despite all the hobnobbing that goes on between the Court and Vendome and ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... of their judgment, have set him down for an insane man, they could not reconcile such a condition of mind with the masterly speech in the morning papers. They were also much disappointed at his appearance, for he resembled more a corsair, or a pirate, than a great politician. And as his coat was threadbare, and his hair short cropped, many thought him a man who could better maintain his dignity at a distance, though heaven might send ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... from the author of "Childe Harold" and "The Corsair"! But the very extravagance of Byron's claims for Pope makes it plain that he was pleading a lost cause. When Warton issued the first volume of his "Essay on Pope," it was easy for leaders of literary opinion, like Johnson and Goldsmith, to pooh-pooh the critical ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers |
