"Piratical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... buffet him from one side and from the other. They circle round him like a pair of swift gunboats round an antiquated man-of-war. They even perch upon his back and dash their beaks into his neck and pluck feathers from his piratical plumage. At last his lumbering flight has carried him far enough away, and the brave little defenders fly back to the nest, poising above it on quivering wings for a moment, then dipping down swiftly in pursuit of some passing insect. The war is over. Courage has had its turn. Now ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... it was intended to plant the Anglo-Saxon flag on the walls of Mexico. If half what he asserted was true, the worst apprehensions of the abolitionists are too likely to be realized by the Texian revolution, and the establishment of a new slave-holding power on the vast territory claimed by that piratical band of robbers, and forming the South-western frontier ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... piratical trader which conveyed Pinto to Japan, it sold its cargo at an immense profit, while the three Portuguese reached China again rich in presents. This was not Pinto's only visit to Japan. He made three other voyages thither, the last in 1556, as ambassador from the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... persons; their names were reserved for stars. Like Alpha Gartner, the sun of Poictesme, and Beta Gartner, a buckshot-sized pink glow in the southeast, and Gamma Gartner, out of sight on the other side of the world, all named for old Genji Gartner, the scholarly and half-piratical adventurer whose ship had been the first to approach the three stars and discover that each ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... to be made, and I cannot go back from my word." Verres perceived that soft words would be useless, and took at once another line. The King, he said, must leave Sicily before nightfall. The public safety demanded it. He had heard of a piratical expedition which was on its way from Syria to the province, and that his departure was necessary. Antiochus had no choice but to obey; but before he went he publicly protested in the market-place of Syracuse against the wrong that had been done. ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... are infested by the Biddoomabs, a piratical tribe who lurk in the many islands scattered upon its ample bosom. They are rude and savage in their manners, despising cultivation: and possessing nearly a thousand canoes, they spread terror and desolation ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... with the Oscans or Ausones, neighbours of the Daunians; and fourthly, the Purusata, whom some explain as the Pelasgi, and others as the Philistines. The lead in the expedition was taken by these last. At their summons the islands and shores of the Mediterranean gave forth their piratical hordes—the sea was covered by their light galleys and swept by their strong pars—Tanauna, Shartana, Sheklusha, Tursha, and Uashasha combined their squadrons into a powerful fleet, while Purusata and Tekaru advanced in countless numbers along the land. The Purusata ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... Borneo, although of late the Spaniards have done much to exterminate them. But when Sir James Brooke first visited Sarawak, the nobles there, and their sultan at Bruni, used to permit, nay, encourage, piratical raids against their own subjects at a little distance, provided they shared in the profits of the expedition, thus impoverishing the country they ruled, and putting a stop to all native trade—a short-sighted and wicked policy. It took a good many years of stern resistance on ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... darkest hour of a very dark night, in the year 1883, a large brig lay becalmed on the Indian Ocean, not far from that region of the Eastern world which is associated in some minds with spices, volcanoes, coffee, and piratical junks, ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... cloud of the impending upheaval, Chinese coolies in great numbers began to emigrate to the United States. At the same time the bitter feeling against foreigners was intensified by an encounter of the British steamship "Media" with a fleet of piratical Chinese junks. Thirteen of the junks ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... which is best remembered, and which will be read with pleasure for many years to come, is "Captain Brand," who, as the author states on his title page, was a "pirate of eminence in the West Indies." As a sea story pure and simple, "Captain Brand" has never been excelled, and as a story of piratical life, told without the usual embellishments of blood and thunder, ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... strained. The captain now took a boat, and four men, and pulled ashore, to get prows, to lighten the vessel. We had but eight men before the mast, and six aft. This, of course, left only nine souls on board. That night nothing occurred; but, in the morning early, two piratical prows approached, and showed a disposition to board us. Mr. Croes was the person who saved the ship. He stuck up handspikes, and other objects, about deck; putting hats and caps on them, so as to make us appear ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... it left the divided liberals to face an opposition of equal strength, whenever the conservatives, anti-revolutionaries and Catholics acted together. This same year saw the first phase of the war with the piratical state of Achin. An expedition of 3600 men under General Koehler was sent out against the defiant sultan in April, 1873, but suffered disaster, the General himself dying of disease. A second stronger expedition under General van Swieten was then dispatched, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... in speaking of the piratical and ferocious Sea Dayaks of Borneo, that "besides the ordinary attention which a young man is able to pay to the girl he desires to make his wife—as helping her in her farm work, and in carrying ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... even a brief account of Drake's life would fill a small encyclopaedia. The story of his first ruin off Vera Cruz, of his campaign of vengeance, of his piratical voyage to the Pacific, of his doings with the California Indians, of his fight in the Armada—any one of these would fill an ordinary volume. Only that part of his life bearing on American exploration ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... life went on just the same around them. The hungry bass with his piratical black fin just cutting the surface, scattered the shoals of minnows, and sadly lessened their numbers. The kingfisher scooped occasionally from his perch to return with a shining morsel, and the gray heron stalked among the pools like a duck on stilts, searching ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... now being at peace with most of the piratical states of Barbary, will find an excellent market for their fish in the Mediterranean. This circumstance may induce congress to pay some attention to the hints thrown out by Dr. Belknap, in his Account of the American Newfoundland Fishery, which ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... around those islands lying thousands of miles out in the Pacific Ocean. He was doing his best on this particular morning, and under his influence, so brightening everything, two little boys and a little jackass were having a good time near a long, low, rakish, but far from piratical-looking house upon the hillside already mentioned. One of the boys was white, one of the boys was brown, and the little jackass was gray. The name of the white boy was William Harrison, though he was always called Billy, and his father, an American merchant in Honolulu, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... that the aid of foreign powers would be desirable; and their intervention, if to be obtained at all, could not be solicited or hoped for, without the most explicit disavowal of an intention to reestablish a traffic which had already been denounced as infamous and piratical by the leading powers of the world. The rebels, therefore, were compelled by the exigencies of their condition to prohibit the slave trade in their permanent constitution. Doubtless they would never have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... taken from the Conquistas of the Augustinian writer Fray Casimiro Diaz. With this main subject he interpolates other matters from the general annals of that time. Among these is a relation of the piratical raids of the Moros into Leyte and Panay in 1634; the invaders kill a Jesuit priest. In June of the following year arrives the new governor, Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera. At the same time, Archbishop ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... harbor for Mexico, a heavy schooner is filled with the best attainable fittings for a piratical cruise. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN KING of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... which was the restored and Romanised city of Carthage, had been for generations the chief exporter of corn to feed the pauperised population of Rome, and here now dwelt and ruled, and from hence (428-432) sallied forth to his piratical raids against Italy, the deadliest enemy of the Roman name, the king of the Vandals, Gaiseric.[44] The Vandal conquest of Africa was, at the time which we have now reached, a somewhat old story, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... certain piratical rovers, of various European nations, who formerly infested the coasts of Spanish America. They were originally inoffensive settlers in Hispaniola, but were inhumanly driven from their habitations by the jealous policy of the Spaniards; whence originated their implacable hatred ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... his destination, but for themselves preferred the island towns—Santiago and Santo Domingo in Hispaniola. There were wealth and wine and women, there the fringing islets where booty might be hidden, and there the deep caves where foregathered many small craft misnamed piratical. "Lord! the Sea Wraith would soon make herself Admiral of that brood, leading them forth from those hidden places to pounce upon Santo Domingo, that was the seat of government and as wealthy a place as any in the Indies!—the Sea Wraith ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... The piratical war which followed, in many ways similar to that which the 'wise Walpole' tried to avert in 1739, was hardly less impolitic than immoral. It alienated Holland, it sanctioned French aggression on Flanders (xii. 7), it ended by giving Mazarin and Lewis XIV ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... tax your politeness so far," returned the colonel, abundantly mollified by this ample concession; "I stand too much your debtor, Captain Borroughcliffe, for so freely volunteering to defend my house against the attacks of my piratical, rebellious, and misguided countrymen, to think ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... In Which Archie Armstrong Joins a Piratical Expedition and Sails Crested Seas to Cut Out ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... Robert Holmes, which, by a flagrant violation of every international right, seized the Dutch fort. The balance of wrong was thus roughly reversed. By an act of unwarrantable violence the Duke of York had fixed upon his own nation the burden of maintaining what amounted to piratical aggression; and he had done it—as Clarendon is obliged to allow—"without any authority, and without a shadow of justice," [Footnote: Letter to Downing, October 28th, 1664.]—solely in satisfaction of his own private rights as a company promoter. Clarendon's diplomacy was, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... strange to me and very delightful; it might have been a chapter lifted bodily from one of my favourite story-books. There seemed to be a piratical flavour about the ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... defiantly joined the Confederacy; sequestration acts were passed by the Confederate Congress, and citizens of the United States were made aliens in the Confederacy, and their property there was confiscated, and debts due loyal men North were collected for the benefit of the Confederate Treasury; piratical vessels, with the aid and connivance of boastful civilized monarchies of Europe, destroyed our commerce and drove our flag from the high seas; above a half million of men fell in battle, and another half million died of wounds and disease incident to war; above sixty ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... Santa Maria—for that was the vessel's name—they found much to interest them, and the sailors treated them very kindly, in spite of their piratical appearance. What delighted them most was a monkey that belonged to the cook. He was one of the cutest, cleverest little creatures that ever parodied humanity. His owner had taught him a good many tricks, and he had taught himself even more; and both the boys felt that in all their lives they ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... obliged to request Temple not to joke, but the next moment I had launched Captain Jasper Welsh on a piratical exploit; Temple lifted the veil from his history, revealing him amid the excesses of a cannibal feast. I dragged him before a British jury; Temple hanged him in view of an excited multitude. As he boasted that there was the end of Captain Welsh, I broke the rope. But Temple spoiled my ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of THE SKULL—of letting fall a bullet through the skull's eye—was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... apparent motion is toward cells to sleep in, and clubs to play bridge in, and amusements for evenings, and a strenuous business life, run on piratical principles, into which the women are drawn as decoy ducks? Because this is, is it going to be, as soon as a good proportion of the thinking people stand face to face with the problem? I believe it is possible to solve the problem, but only if the aid of scientifically trained women ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... fable of an old piratical Admiral; though the details seemed afterwards to decompose into accidents. For instance, he wore a broad-brimmed hat as protection against the sun; but the front flap of it was turned up straight to the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... era, the fair hunting of the present day needed the eloquent defence of Arrian, who says that "there is as much difference between a fair trial of speed in a good run, and ensnaring a poor animal without an effort, as between the secret piratical assaults of robbers at sea, and the victorious naval engagements of the Athenians at Artemisium and at Salamis." [11] The first hint of the employment of the dog in the pursuit of other animals is given ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... of them here on deck—stood in a ring around us. They were all big men, nearly of a seven-foot average, dressed in leather jerkins and short leather breeches, with bare knees and flaring leather boots. Piratical swaggering fellows, knife-blades mingled with small hand projectors fastened to their belts. Gray, heavy faces, some with scraggly, unshaven beards. They plucked at us, jabbering ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... government lent to his attacks upon Spanish galleons and cities, stands forth as one of the greatest free lances of the world. His history is unique, brilliant, and commanding; his service for his country and the attack upon the Spanish Armada atoning, as it were, for his piratical crimes. What irony of fate, that this wonderful man, a knight of England, a member of Parliament, a warrior and sailor, a robber and conqueror, should now lie in a lead coffin at the bottom of the sea off Porto Rico, conquered by death while on his way to the islands ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... in search of one. The boat from which he landed has deposited on the shore his effects—his arms, his nautical instruments, his charts, a Bible, and provisions of various kinds. Notwithstanding his piratical sentiments, the captain of the Swordfish has not designed to precede exile by confiscation. Selkirk takes his gun, his gourd; but, unable to carry all his riches, he conceals them behind a stony thicket, well defended by the ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... went to bed after Joyce was long asleep. He turned restlessly, beating his mind with increasing wonder as to how it could be so incredibly true that the Idealists were the actual masters of the Nucleus. That they had somehow tamed the murderous, piratical Markovians. He couldn't have known this ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... by Beppo (for there was yet time for these preparations before midnight), repaired to the yacht, taking Giacomo by the way. There our new ally, familiar to most of that piratical crew, and sanctioned by the presence of Frank, as the count's friend and prospective brother-in-law, told Peschiera's hirelings that they were to quit the vessel, and wait on shore under Giacomo's auspices till further orders; and as soon as the decks were cleared of these ruffians (save ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... enlighten or educate the negroes, the severer restrictions on manumission, the thrusting forth out of certain States of all free persons of colour, the atrocious Fugitive Slave Bill, one of the latest achievements of Congress, and the piratical attempts upon Cuba, avowedly on the part of all Southerners, abetting or justifying it because it will add slave-territory and 600,000 slaves to their possessions;—surely these do not seem indications of the better state of things you ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... certain number of times in the season; and if it be but once, and only for five minutes, your cabbage and sweet corn suffer. What villager, or countryman either, has not been awakened at night by the squeaking and crunching of those piratical jaws under the window, or in the direction of the vegetable patch? I have had the cows, after they had eaten up my garden, break into the stable where my own milcher was tied, and gore her and devour her meal. Yes, life presents but one absorbing ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... would thus be huddled up. All of a sudden, at the beginning of June, De Ruyter led out his fleet, and with a fair wind behind him stood for the Thames. All is fair in war. England was caught napping. The doleful history reads like that of a sudden piratical onslaught, and reveals the fatal inefficiency of the administration. Sheerness was practically defenceless. "There were a Company or two of very good soldiers there under excellent officers, but the fortifications were so weak and unfinished, and all other provisions so entirely ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... ships, discharged his shot so fast upon the batteries and castles, that in two hours the guns were dismounted, and the works forsaken, though he was, at first, exposed to the fire of sixty cannon. He then ordered his officers to send out their long boats, well manned, to seize nine of the piratical ships lying in the road, himself continuing to fire upon the castle. This was so bravely executed, that, with the loss of only twenty-five men killed, and forty-eight wounded, all the ships were fired in the sight of Tunis. Thence sailing to Tripoli, he concluded a peace with that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... being carried on, while anarchy, rebellion, and bloodshed reigned inland. The Raja, Muda Hasim, was, as he assured Mr. Brooke, utterly powerless to act. The rebellion in the interior was affecting his government even more seriously than the piratical raids on the coast. He concluded by begging that Mr. Brooke would remain with his yacht, which was fully armed, at Kuching until things looked brighter, hoping that when the rebels heard there was an armed British ship lying at the capital they would be intimidated, and ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... shrine, and threw the keys into the Nid. Its secrets from that day were respected until the profane hands of Lutheran Danes carried it bodily away, with all the gold and silver chalices, and jewelled pyxes, which, by kingly gifts and piratical offerings, had accumulated for centuries in ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... will, which I could not do because there could be found no other reputable witness, the whole crew of the hotel being at church. 'This,' he said, 'is the way in which our valuable city hotels—packed no doubt with gems and jewellery—are deserted on a Sunday morning. Some bold piratical fellow, defying the spirit of Sabbatarianism, might make a handsome revenue by sacking the derelict hotels between the hours of ten and twelve. One hotel a week would enable such a man to retire in course of a year. A mask might perhaps be worn for the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... And is it possible that he, if he had any set purpose of attacking the Plate- fleet, would not have kept them, in order to attempt that with him which neither they nor he could do without each other. Moreover, no 'piratical' act ever took place; if any had, we should have heard enough about it; and why is Parker to be believed against Raleigh alone, when there is little doubt that he slandered all the rest of the captains? Lastly, it was to this very Parker, ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... studded with small islets, which is known by the appellation of Pirate's Bay, so called from its being a favourite resort of the Illanoan pirates. It was in this bay that the Dido's boats were anchored when they were surprised by several piratical prahus, the look-out men in the European boats, exhausted by the heat and long pulling at the oar, having fallen asleep. They had scarcely time to cut the cables and grasp their weapons ere they were assailed on all sides by the pirates, who felt ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... and when I was well and strong again, the whaleship Chalice of Sag Harbour, Captain Freeman, touched here, and the master came on shore. He was an old acquaintance of my husband's, and told us that he had come ashore purposely to warn us of a piratical vessel which had made her appearance in these seas a few months before, and had seized two or three English and American ships, and murdered every living soul of their crews. She hailed from Coquimbo, and her captain was said to be a Frenchman, whilst her crew was composed of the worst ...
— "Old Mary" - 1901 • Louis Becke
... gloriously fine morning. We had been dodging about the coast on and off for a month on the look-out for piratical junks and lorchas, had found none, and were now lying at anchor in the mouth of the Nyho river, opposite the busy city of that name. Lastly, we three had leave to go ashore for the day, and were just off when the ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... France in the high town. Diligences leave daily for Bastia, Sartene, and Ajaccio. A steamer arrives every Saturday from Ajaccio and returns on the Monday. Bonifacio was founded in 833 by the Tuscan marquis whose name it bears, to protect this part of the island against the piratical incursions of the Saracens. The high town is built on the top of a limestone rock rising vertically from the sea. The low town occupies one side of the fine natural dock, hemmed in by perpendicular cliffs with an opening of only 328 yards towards the sea. From the steamboat wharf ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... held not only over his own people but over the Gentiles of the mainlands as well. With these mainlanders, he regarded Beaver Island as a nest of pirates and murderers. He knew of the depredations of Strang and his people among the fishermen and settlers, of the piratical expeditions of his armed boats, of the dreaded raids of his sheriffs, and of the crimes that made the women of the shores tremble and turn white at the mere ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... the waterfront, reminiscent as it is of the epoch of the Spanish Main. This hint is carried out in the sculptured figures in the alcoves above each arch. Allen Newman modeled them, giving to his work the dash and daring of the domineering conquistadors and piratical deckhands of those stirring days. The portal here pictured leads directly to the Esplanade near the Gardens adjoining the ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... look, as if they had been crossed with fish and seaweed. Down by the Docks, they 'board seamen' at the eating-houses, the public-houses, the slop-shops, the coffee-shops, the tally-shops, all kinds of shops mentionable and unmentionable—board them, as it were, in the piratical sense, making them bleed terribly, and giving no quarter. Down by the Docks, the seamen roam in mid-street and mid-day, their pockets inside out, and their heads no better. Down by the Docks, the daughters of wave-ruling Britannia also ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the estate of the young lord—- and afterwards Yonkers. Subsequently the tract passed into the hands of Frederick Philipse, the "Dutch millionaire," as the English called him, some of whom alleged that he owed a large part of his fortune to piratical and contraband ventures. The suspicion was strong enough to force Philipse out of the governing council of the colony, and he returned to his manor where he died (1702) at ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... Ednoth himself; and then returned with nothing gained but such plunder as they succeeded in carrying off. The next year they repeated the attempt in the same style, and were again defeated, even more disastrously, this time by one of the newcomers, Brian of Britanny. Such piratical descents were not dangerous to the Norman government, nor was a rally to beat them off any test of ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... flag, on the Spanish Main, in the good old days of the bucaneers. But hard and fierce as many of them looked, they were not wholly insensible to kindness. On the schooner Power of God, where there seemed to be more wild, cruel, piratical types than on any other vessel except, perhaps, St. James the Apostle, I noticed a sailor with a stern, hard, almost black face and fierce, dark eyes, who—had such a thing been possible—might have stepped, just as he stood, out ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... birth, speech, and institutions, was neither a nation nor a family of kindred nations, but a congeries of heterogeneous states. Some of these, like Venice and Genoa, boasted the proud title of republics; they were in reality narrow, commercial, even piratical oligarchies, destitute of any vigorous political life. The Pope, like other petty rulers, was but a temporal prince, despotic, and not even enlightened, as was the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Naples and the Milanese both groaned under the yoke of foreign rulers, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the low material dangers of small-pox, quartain ague, or robbers which troubled the Elizabethan. Such considerations were beneath his heroical temper. Sir Edward Winsor, warned against the piratical Gulf of Malta, writes: "And for that it should not be said an Englishman to come so far to see Malta, and to have turned backe againe, I determined rather making my sepulker of that Golfe."[99] It was the sort of danger that weakened character which made people doubt the benefits ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... rest in the roadway, whooped at once, and entered whole-souled upon the side of the maiden. The men became so engrossed in this affair that they entirely ceased to remember their own large war. They jeered the piratical private, and called attention to various defects in his personal appearance; and they were wildly enthusiastic in support of ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... cook, and Pango, the Dagoes, and the surviving Sou'wegian were for tossing him overboard; but the rest of us wouldn't have it. There was no evidence of poison, and as we'd done no killing so far in our piratical venture, we'd better keep clear of it now, with so much at stake. A court that would acquit us as soldiers of fortune that had merely borrowed a schooner might hang us as pirates and murderers; but we watched the Jap. We kept him away from the grub while ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... not the missing rib," said the bishop who, when he was genuinely touched, often relapsed into his native humor. "But what shall we call the boat? I can't go on missionary voyages with an Indian pilot and a Scotch engineer in a slim, black, piratical looking vessel that flies the name of a heathen queen. Even my gaiters wouldn't save me ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... the men and evade the other. But this plan scarce promised success, for the house was situate in the sugar plantation, and doubtless many negroes would be at work, and the overseer would be at hand, with possibly others of the piratical dogs whom Vetch had brought up from ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... long list of names that were accurate enough, though the fact was concealed that they mostly belonged to boats; and swelling the force of the colony to something more than two thousand fighting men. The piratical commander, who went by the name of 'the admiral' among his followers, was a good deal startled by this information, appealing to Waally to know whether it might be relied on for truth. Waally could ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... earlier flight had been impossible on account of Wan Lee being obliged to perform his regular duty of blacking the shoes of Polly and Hickory before breakfast,—a menial act which in the pure Republic of childhood was never thought inconsistent with the loftiest piratical ambition. On the ridge they met one "Patsey," the son of a neighbour, sun burned, broad-brimmed hatted, red handed, like themselves. As there were afterwards some doubts expressed whether he joined the Pirates of his ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... see this piratical individual you girls are talking about," laughed Laura, who was ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... distinguished strangers visiting Sulaco. The mention of the dignity and neutrality of the flag, so difficult to preserve in his position, "right in the thick of these events between the lawlessness of that piratical villain Sotillo and the more regularly established but scarcely less atrocious tyranny of his Excellency Don Pedro Montero," came next in order. Captain Mitchell was not the man to enlarge upon mere dangers much. But he insisted that it was a memorable day. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... millions of money to the reclamation of land in Ireland, would be laughed to scorn in the British legislature. Yet Parliament would consent almost without a question—perhaps amidst the cheers of all parties—to the expenditure of this amount in piratical incursions, such as those made upon the inhabitants of Affghanistan, Scinde, Syria, and other nations, who have never injured us." The fourth letter is a continuation of the same subjects. The fifth discusses the railway question, then in its infancy. The sixth deals with public ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... degenerated into mere communities of pirates, and under Turkish influence civilization and commerce declined. The story of these states from the beginning of the 16th century to the third decade of the 19th century is largely made up of piratical exploits on the one hand and of ineffectual reprisals on the other. In Algiers, Tunis and other cities were ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... appear the Shardana, the Mykenaean people who gave their name to Sardinia, the Danauna, believed to be identical with the Danaoi of Homer, the Akhaivasha, perhaps the Achaeans, and the Tursha and Shakalsha, who may have been of the same stock as the piratical Lycians. ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... by the "London Magazine." It was his first essay in the study of German literature, which he did so much to popularise in Britain. It appeared in book form in 1825, and a second edition was published in 1845 in order to prevent piratical reprints. In his introduction to the second edition, Carlyle pleads for the indulgence of the reader, asking him to remember constantly that "it was written twenty years ago." It has indeed been superseded by more ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... but inferior in energy. He, though he had no army, rapidly levied one. This man has lost that very army which he had. As, therefore, by my diligence, and the authority of the senate, and your own zeal and valour, you crushed Catilina, so you will very soon hear that this infamous piratical enterprise of Antonius has been put down by your own perfect and unexampled harmony with the senate, and by the good fortune and valour of your armies and generals. I, for my part, as far as I am able to labour, and to effect ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... human life. The very vice of avarice ministered to the purification of barbarism; and the very evil of slavery in its earliest form was applied to the mitigation of another evil—war conducted in the spirit of piratical outrage. The commercial instincts of men having worked one set of changes in war, a second set of changes was prompted by instincts derived from the arts of ornament and pomp. Splendor of arms, of banners, of equipages, of ceremonies, and the elaborate forms of intercourse ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... ready, in the name of the King. The body of the emigration was Huguenot, mingled with young nobles, restless, idle, and poor, with reckless artisans, and piratical sailors from the Norman and Breton seaports. They put to sea from Havre on the twelfth of July, 1555, and early in November saw the shores of Brazil. Entering the harbor of Rio Janeiro, then called ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... hoarse piratical tone. 'Gimme the tucker, Black Douglas; I'll go down. You coves keep ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... must fight till the day of your death with alien, opposite forces, because the blood-vessels of Nancy Elkins, as they sail through the grand canals of the city of your life, so often hang out piratical banners, and bear down on better craft as they near the dangerous places, or put out, like wreckers after a storm, seeking for treasure the owners somehow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... liked to be a begonia in Washington, for this was rather his ideal of the successful statesman, and he thought about it still more when the Westminster Review for October brought him his article on the Gold Conspiracy, which was also instantly pirated on a great scale. Piratical he was himself henceforth driven to be, and he asked only to be pirated, for he was sure not to be paid; but the honors of piracy resemble the colors of the begonia; they are showy but not useful. Here was a tour de force he had never dreamed himself equal to performing: two long, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... not know. It must be rather like the irresistible force and the immovable object. In the second place H.E. (no one could better deserve these formidable initials) was given the job of clearing Lundy Island of its piratical tenants, and I happened to have Lundy Island just opposite me as I read the book. It is not often that a reviewer has the chance of checking local colour with so little pains. And in the third place Mr. JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... permission to print a book. To this I naturally answered that by carrying out this doctrine he would simply lavish large sums upon publishers in every country of Europe and America, many of them rich and some of them piratical; and that in my opinion he would do a much better thing by taking the full value of his copyrights and bestowing the proceeds upon the peasantry starving about him. To which he answered that it was a question ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... this to thee (a piratical knave with a most kind heart, having, I am told, a wife in every port of France and of England the south, a most heinous sin!) will wait for thy answer, or will bring thee hither, which is still better. He is worthy of trust if thou makest him swear by the little finger of St. Peter. By all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... immigration from St. Christopher's about the year 1660, the buccaneers had taken possession of Tortuga, the geographical position and character of which island was well suited to their commercial and piratical purposes. This little island had been occupied by a few Spaniards as early as 1591; but their numbers were so small as not to interfere with the object of the buccaneers, while its rocky conformation afforded peculiar facilities for defence in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... narrative belonging to the earlier and the later Middle Ages respectively. Beowulf might stand for the one side, Lancelot or Gawain for the other. It is a difference not confined to literature. The two groups are distinguished from one another, as the respectable piratical gentleman of the North Sea coast in the ninth or tenth century differs from one of the companions of St. Louis. The latter has something fantastic in his ideas which the other has not. The Crusader may indeed be natural and brutal enough in most of his ways, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... many years to come, is "Captain Brand," who, as the author states on his title page, was a "pirate of eminence in the West Indies." As a sea story pure and simple, "Captain Brand" has never been excelled and as a story of piratical life, told without the usual embellishments of blood and thunder, it has ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... established himself on the old system, shaved in the quarrels of the chiefs and princes of the Mainland, now helped Pict and now Scot, roved the seas and made all ships prizes, and kept alive his old grudge against Harold Fairhair and the new system by a long series of piratical incursions on the Norway coast. So worrying did these Viking cruises at last become, that Harold, who meantime had steadily pursued his policy at home, and forced all men to bow to his sway or leave the land, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... daughters. He was himself a brave warrior, animated with the greatest hatred against the Ostmen, who, at that period, were laying every part of Erin waste. His sword never rested in its sheath, and day and night his light gallies cruised about the coast on the watch for any piratical marauder who might turn his prow thither. One day a sail was observed on the horizon; it came nearer and nearer, and the pirate standard was distinguished waving from its mast-head. Immediately surrounded by the Irish ships, it was captured after a desperate resistance. Those that remained ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... of scientific training, indolent manners, effeminate appearance, hidden energy, and absolute courage, lounged through the doors of the Atlas Building. Since his rescue from the volcanic island that had witnessed the piratical murder of his old employer, Doctor Schermerhorn, the spectacular dissolution of the murderers, and his own imprisonment in a cave beneath the very roar of an eruption, he had been nursing his shattered ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... innocent desires; But more imprudent grown with every visit, Haidee forgot the island was her Sire's; When we have what we like 't is hard to miss it, At least in the beginning, ere one tires; Thus she came often, not a moment losing, Whilst her piratical papa was cruising. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... in its temples. Financial giants, strong to direct and augment the forces of capital, and taking an approved toll in millions for so doing, had existed before; but in the case of Manderson there had been this singularity, that a pale halo of piratical romance, a thing especially dear to the hearts of his countrymen, had remained incongruously about his head through the years when he stood in every eye as the unquestioned guardian of stability, the stamper-out of manipulated ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... Russia, or as when the Frenchman Cartier, seeking for a north-west passage, hit upon the great estuary of the St. Lawrence, and marked out a claim for France to the possession of the area which it drained. Most effective of all were the smuggling and piratical raids into the reserved waters of West Africa and the West Indies, and later into the innermost penetralia of the Pacific Ocean, which were undertaken with rapidly increasing boldness by the navigators of all three nations, but above all by the English. Drake is the supreme exponent of ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... generally a small one, for a tender, to collect palm-oil, ebony, and ivory,[38] at different places on the coast, as the ships generally remain in one river until their cargoes are complete. There was a dreadful accident happened to one of these tenders. She was boarded by a number of piratical blacks in canoes, belonging to an island near the mouth of the Camaroon river, when they murdered all the trader's crew, and after plundering the vessel of every thing they thought worth carrying away, they got clear off ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... and blighted by the anti-Christian policy of trading Venice, the bad faith of Austria towards the Uzcoque race, and the extortions of her counsellors. Cursing in the bitterness of his heart, not only Turks, Austrians, and Venetians, but all mankind, he no longer opposed the piratical tendencies of his neglected people, and eventually headed many of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... this? "This, too, is mere folly," say you, "and is an untrue story; for long before this, Minos, of more ancient date, subjected the Aegaean seas with his fleet, and by seasonable correction, punished {piratical} attacks." What then can I possibly do for you, my Cato of a Reader, if neither Fables[17] nor Tragic Stories suit your taste? Do not be too severe upon {all} literary men, lest they repay ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... depressing the human mind, acted upon CRANBORNE like electric shock. Astonished and interested House to-night by vigorous speech delivered in favour of Bill. With clenched hands and set teeth declared that he "meant to fight for Established Church till death." He put it to the piratical PICTON and other marauders, whether, seeing that in such case the conflict must necessarily be prolonged, they would not do well to seize this opportunity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... easily induced to incur the positive loss and probable disgrace that would follow from a Russian invasion, like that which took place in 1759. As to England, the Emperor would be mad to attempt her conquest; and he knows too well what is due to his fame to engage in a piratical dash at London. An invasion of England can never be safely undertaken except by some power that is master of the seas; and England is not in the least disposed to abandon her maritime supremacy. There would have to be a Battle of Actium before her shores could be in danger, and she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... they take a whim cannot be restrained from trying to gratify it, I have little confidence that they will keep their promises, since there is no holding them to account except so far as fear will oblige them to it. Still, it seems that this year they have not made any piratical expeditions to these islands, although I am informed that they have attacked some of the other islands in various provinces with a great fleet of caracoas. Being in some doubt, I have kept the provinces of Pintados in a state of defense with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... of them have been found on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and some claim that they founded settlements farther south. They figure largely in the early history of England and Scotland, and even carried their piratical arms into Russia, Flanders, France, Italy, and ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... adorned with many-colored trimmings. Five and twenty gentleman, all in a row, sat on the opposite side of the hall, looking somewhat subdued, as men are apt to do when they fancy they are in danger of making fools of themselves. They, also, were en costume, for all the dark ones had grown piratical in red shirts, the light ones nautical in blue; and a few boldly appeared in white, making up in starch and studs what they lost in color, while all were more or less Byronic as ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... as they nicknamed him, did indeed have a piratical look, as John had said. He stood more than six and a half feet in his moccasins, and was straight as an arrow, with the waist of a boy. His face was dark, his eyebrows very heavy and black, and his dark, full beard, his scant trousers held up with a brilliant ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... passed away—they were followed by the buccaneers, privateers, marooners and pirates—a degenerate company, but not without their picturesque side. Pierre le Grand, Francois l'Olonnois, Henry Morgan, are captains only one degree more piratical than Drake and Raleigh. Edward Teach, Kidd, Avery, Bartholomew Roberts were pirates only because they plundered ships English and French as well as Spanish; that they were roaring, reckless, deboshed villains as well, detracted little ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... piratical engraver in Mayence, has announced an edition of my collected works for the pianoforte and also stringed instruments. I consider it my duty publicly to inform all friends of music that I have no share whatever in ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... itself was with Jim Kendric the golden thing. He felt alive, jubilant, keenly in sympathy with the lure and zest of the expedition. He felt like singing, would no doubt have sung out in some wild border ballad or bit of deep sea melody with a piratical swing to it, had he not been half the time fairly breathless from the pace they ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... in the pinnace, except that which is to form its most precious freight; and again the piratical crew bring their heads together, to deliberate about the final step; the time for taking which is fast ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... childhood was happy because I lived purely in a world of the imagination. There never was a bolder or more truly noble pirate than I was during the hour of the Sunday sermon, when I whiled away the good clergyman's discourse by sweeping the seas in my piratical schooner, and harrowing the Spanish Main. My tin soldiers were flesh and blood heroes, my kites flew nearly to the outer limits of the solar system, and I never quite lost the belief that I could dig a tunnel to China with the kitchen fire-shovel, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... position of United States Consul at Algiers, and succeeded both in liberating many of his countrymen who were held as prisoners, and in perfecting treaties with the rulers of the Barbary States, which gave United States vessels entrance to their ports and secured them from piratical attacks. On his return to Paris he translated Volney's 'Ruins' into English, made preparations for writing histories of the American and French revolutions, and expanded his 'Vision of Columbus' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... poorer classes of those days had by no means all the privileges possessed to-day. Add to this the undoubted fact that literally for centuries there had lived along the south coast of England, especially in the neighbourhood of the old Cinque ports, a race of men who were always ready for some piratical or semi-piratical sea exploit. It was in their blood to undertake and long for such enterprises, and it only wanted but the opportunity to send them roving the seas as privateers, or running goods illegally from one coast to another. And it is not true that time has altogether stifled ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... a deal of piratical smack in the anti-Spanish ventures of Elizabethan days. Many of the adventurers—of the Sir Francis Drake school, for instance—actually overstepped again and again the bounds of international law, entering into the realms of de facto piracy. Nevertheless, while their doings were not ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... scoured the seas, descended upon unguarded coasts, and deemed the exercise of plunder a profession of honour, remind us of the exploits of the Scandinavian Her-Kongr, and the boding banners of the Dane. The seas of Greece tempted to piratical adventures: their numerous isles, their winding bays, and wood-clad shores, proffered ample enterprise to the bold— ample booty to the rapacious; the voyages were short for the inexperienced, the refuges numerous for the defeated. In early ages, valour is the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... made of women, and it is not probable that any went over with the first colonists. The character of the men was not high. Many of them were "gentlemen" adventurers, turbulent spirits, who would not work, who were much better fitted for piratical maraudings than the labor of founding a state. The historian must agree with the impression conveyed by Smith, that it was poor material out of which to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... atop of the study-table, in his cozy room, one Friday afternoon two weeks after John Thorwald's return to the football squad, was fathoms deep in Stevenson's "Treasure Island." As he perused the thrilling pages, the irrepressible youth twanged a banjo accompaniment, and roared with gusto the piratical chantey of Long John Silver's buccaneer crew; Hicks, however, despite his saengerfest, was completely lost in the enthralling narrative, so that he seemed to hear the parrot shrieking, "Pieces of eight! Pieces of ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... spasmodically sank in the sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin. So have I seen a bird with clipped wing, making affrighted broken circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks. But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make known her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained up and enchanted in him; he had no voice, save that choking respiration through his spiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakably ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... and carpenter's shed near the bank; its floor was thickly covered with sawdust and pine-wood shavings, and there was a mouldy buffalo skin which he had once transported thither from the old wagon-bed. There, too, was his secret cache of a candle in a bottle, buried with other piratical treasures in the presence of the youthful Peters, who consented to be sacrificed on the spot in buccaneering fashion to complete the unhallowed rites. He unearthed the candle, lit it, and clearing away a part of the shavings ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... melons and keeps such a nice, amiable pet dog," laughed Jack, roaring at the recollection of the piratical expedition of which the island dweller had told ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... been established for a longer period. The rapid growth of the practice among the Ibans was no doubt largely due to the influence of the Malays, who had been taught by Arabs and others the arts of piracy, and with whom the Ibans were associated in the piratical enterprises that gave the waters around Borneo a sinister notoriety during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the settlements of Ibans were practically confined ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Nemtor, as it was called in the Celtic language, kept watch during the night over the camp, village, and sea, preserving the Gaulish frontier from piratical incursions. ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... demanding hostages of the Indians; and when we would have departed two of us were forcibly detained on pretence of our lacking proper credentials to prove our honesty. In sooth he charged us with piratical intentions, though we had not so much as cracked a pistol or inveigled one barbarian aboard. The sloop lingered for three days, but finally made off, leaving us in the hands of the padre. He despatched us here in canoes, under a guard ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... was, before he assumed the emperorship of Britain, appointed by the Roman authorities admiral of the fleet which they had collected for the purpose of repressing the incursions of the Franks, Saxons, and other piratical tribes, who at that date (A.D. 287) ravaged the ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... generosity, had in turn presented it to the Oriental. Besides, Mallow was rich. What stepping-stones he had used to acquire his initial capital were not perfectly known; but Warrington had heard rumors of shady transactions and piratical exploits in the pearl zone. Mallow, rich, was Mallow disposed of, at least logically; unless indeed it was a bit of anticipatory reprisal. That might possibly be. A drunken Mallow was capable of much, for all ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... The piratical character of the steamboat Caroline and the necessity of self-defense and self-preservation under which Her Majesty's subjects acted in destroying that vessel would seem ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... the high hand, in the face of day, at the mouth of the cannon and by the edge of the sabre of the nation. Doctrines and designs which a few years since could find no mouthpiece out of a bar-room, or the piratical den of a filibuster, are now clothed with power by the authentic response of the bench of our highest judicatory, and obsequiously iterated from the oracular recesses of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... those holding a government office from accepting any present without the king's permission, or that of his council." The delays in obtaining a satisfactory audience with the viceroy become permanent upon rumors that circulate regarding new piratical depredations from one who is suspected to be Limahon. The viceroy, suspecting that Omoncon, Sinsay, and the Spaniards have lied to him regarding the pirate, determines, after closely questioning the fathers, to send them ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... statement to Sir T. Modyford, then Governor of Jamaica, he brought with him from Cuba reliable evidence that the Spaniards were planning an attack upon that colony (see State Papers: West Indies and Colonial Series). If the statements of his prisoners were correct, the subsequent piratical raid upon the Main had some justification. Had the Spaniards matured their plans, and pushed the attack home, it is probable that we should have lost our ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... Indian and Central Pacific oceans, and that it could sail with great swiftness, going either forward or backward with equal readiness. It is a favorite boat used for inter-communication between hundreds of the islands of the South Seas, and the Malays employ them in a different form for their piratical expeditions. They owe their swiftness mainly to the fact that they stand so high out of the water, are very narrow, and present such a ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... hover over the city all day do not live in the neighbourhood. Their nests are far away upon the blue peaks; but they pass much of their time in catching fish, and in stealing from back- yards. They pay the wood and the garden swift and sudden piratical visits; and their sinister cry—pi-yoroyoro, pi-yoroyoro—sounds at intervals over the town from dawn till sundown. Most insolent of all feathered creatures they certainly are—more insolent than even their fellow-robbers, the crows. A kite will drop ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn |
