"Rifling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saw that the German's rifle had been hurled quite ten yards. The barrel was partly wrenched from the stock, and for a distance of about a foot from the muzzle the steel had been split, revealing the glittering rifling. ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... mood, coincident with the rifling of Riggs's person, had not worn over to this evening camp. What talk the outlaws indulged in was necessary and conducted in low tones. The place ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... of the 37th pioneer gas battalion, captured on August 26th, had said that they were to practise with a new type of projector with a range of 3 kilometres, the increased range being obtained by rifling the bore of the projector. He stated that the intention was to use the longer range weapons in conjunction with the old short range projector, using the new type to deal with the reserve positions. The capture of the dumps referred to above ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... gyroscopic effect, being reversed in direction by a change from a right to a left-handed twist of rifling, and being increased by an increase ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... adventure down the slip, ignominious though it was, had put fire into my heart. I entered eagerly into the captain's scheme of hauling and rifling the Millport lobster-traps, in the convenient fog which, as if sent by heaven, hid us for a little space from the land. The blood of ancestral pirates and robbers bounded hilariously once more in my long-easeful, ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the Germans from making their own dicker with the King of the Belgians or with the Congo government, and rifling the hoard on a fifty-fifty ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... for reinforcements. During his advance, the same ill luck attended his enterprise which had blasted Hohenlo's achievement at Bois-le-Duc. The soldiers he left behind him deserted their posts for the sake of rifling the town. The officer in command, instead of keeping them to their duty, joined in the chase. The citizens roused themselves, attacked their invaders, killed many of them, and put the rest to flight. When La Motte returned; he found the panic general. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... three hours being in Carthage I rusht into a Temple. Starr'd all with lights; Which with my drawne sword rifling, in a roome Hung full of Pictures, drawne so full of sweetnesse They struck a reverence in me, found I a woman, A Lady all in white; the very Candles Took brightnesse from her eyes and those cleare Pearles Which in aboundance falling on her cheekes Gave them ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... search, even putting their hands in the mother's pockets, besides rifling those of the son. They of course found nothing except the powder and shot, which had still remained ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... It's the only way out. Let them think you heard a noise, got up to investigate, found me here, rifling the safe—" ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Monument, &c. plate 165. There is one necropolis in Assyria that, in the employment of terra-cotta coffins, resembles the graveyards of Chaldaea; it is that of Kaleh-Shergat, which has long been under process of rifling by the Arabs, who find cylinders, engraved stones, and jewels among its graves. PLACE judges from the appearance of the coffins and other objects found that this necropolis dates from the Parthian ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... how about the rifling in the barrel? I guess there wouldn't be much of that stuff left on by the time the ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... those beautiful instruments known as "trade guns," and at shot-range a man can be killed just as definitely by a dose of pot-leg out of a gas-pipe barrel as he can by a dum-dum bullet sent through scientific rifling. Indeed, for close-quarter righting pot-leg is far more comprehensive, and far less likely to miss than the lonely modern bullet. Moroever, his crew had quite as much dread for him as they had for the enemy, and as a consequence they fought ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... shawl more closely around her and hastened them to the business in hand. On the table was a sheet of paper. On the paper, rifling on three supports, was a small triangular board. Two of the supports were easily moving casters. The third support, placed at the apex of the triangle, was a ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... prohibited by statute at that time in Wyoming, though its most profitable side diversions—such as dropping paralyzing poisons in a man's drink, snatching his money and clearing out with it, cracking him on the head with a leaden billet, or standing him up at the point of a pistol and rifling him—were, as now, discountenanced under ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... guns were at first fitted with a number of gun-metal studs arranged around them in a spiral manner corresponding to the twist of rifling. This was defective, as it allowed, as in the old smooth-bore guns, the powder gas to escape by the clearance (called "windage") between the projectile and the bore, with a consequent loss of efficiency; it also quickly ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was, rendered a most important service to the shepherds by slaying a gigantic robber named Taullas, who was in the habit of plundering their flocks and rifling their cottages. The shepherds, in their gratitude to Tristram, bore him in triumph to King Mark to have him bestow on him a suitable reward. No wonder Mark failed to recognize in the half-clad, wild man, before ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... shadow. Audrey descended the two or three steps leading into the pit, and Haward followed her. Side by side they left the playhouse, and found themselves in the garden, and also in the presence of five or six ladies and gentlemen, seated upon the grass beneath a mulberry-tree, or engaged in rifling the grape ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... could drink, a great thing for the Egyptian native, there was fruit for the picking on the trees, and everything was free! So they imagined, but the exasperated ladies who were continually coming to complain that a sportsman in a blue galabeah was rifling their orchards evidently ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... rifling hand fiercely away. "To touch it would be the vilest theft," he said. "His own it is. With his life he ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... mistaken, doctor, Why he does ask one but for cups and horses, A rifling fly, none of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... charge, and the tumultuous excitement of the conflict, but of the field after the battle—Russians, in their frenzy or their terror, shooting Englishmen who would have offered them water to quench their agony of thirst; Englishmen, in crowds, rifling the pockets of the men they had slain or wounded, taking their few shillings or roubles, and discovering among the plunder of the stiffening corpses images of the 'Virgin and the Child.' You have read this, and your imagination ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... gave immediate orders to remove all the principal men of the prize on board our ships, and only placed four of our men in the prize, for fear of rifling and pillaging the valuable commodities she contained, and gave these men strict warning, if any thing were amissing, that they should answer for the value out of their wages and shares, ordering them on no account to allow any one to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... bundles. One by one he placed them on the floor. It was a dreary occupation alone there in that great, silent room at the dead of night, one indeed with which he was soon satisfied, for somehow it reminded him of rifling coffins in a vault. Before him so carefully put away lay the records of a good if not a distinguished life, and until this moment he had never found the energy even to ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... child," and sighed. Into his dead And wasted heart there leaped a flame and caught His hollow eyes. "Rememberest thou naught, Nothing regrettest, nothing holdst in grief Of all our joy together ere that thief Came rifling in?" For all her answer she Lookt long upon him, long and earnestly; And misty grew her eyes, and slowly filled. Slowly the great tears brimmed, and slowly rilled Adown her cheeks. So presently she hid Those wells of grief, and hung her lovely head; And he had no more words, ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... your murderous scheme," the Superintendent thundered. "You were found in the War Office by the night watchman, rifling a safe of valuable documents. You shot him with a pistol equipped with a silencer. You shot down two more who, hearing his cries, rushed to his aid. And you attempted to stroll out of the building, apparently ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... of tombs. The savage rifling to which Palestinian tombs have been subjected has much reduced the material available for dating them. The following general principles apply to Southern Palestine: those in Northern Palestine and Syria still ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... the sayd English ambassadours, at their being in Prussia, on the behalfe of them of Liuonia, who are the sayd Master his liege people, to haue restitution of their losses, vniustly (as he sayth) offered vnto them by the English, namely, for the robbing and rifling of three ships. [Sidenote: These ships were taken by the English the 20. Iuly 1404.] The value of which ships and of the goods contained in them, according, to the computation of the Liuonian marchants, doeth amount vnto the summe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... to the Gosport navy-yard. It contained at this time sixty-six thousand stand of small arms, several batteries of light artillery and heavy ordnance, and at least one million dollars' worth of ammunition. It was besides supplied with extensive and valuable machinery for repairing guns, rifling barrels, mounting artillery, and preparing shot and shell. The future, to the Union men of St. Louis, looked gloomy enough; persecution, and, if they resisted, death, seemed imminent; and no voice from abroad reached them, giving ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... laurel in bloom across the slope; three or four miles of it, leaves of green wax in the sun, flowers passion pale, motionless, waiting; what was it he missed? The insect life; there were neither butterflies nor bees rifling the fields of honey bloom; the flowers, acres and acres of them, stood passion pale, motionless waiting—waiting what? Then, there was a singing in his ears, a weird strange undertone to the hush of the forest behind them. His breath came heavy. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... shallow grooves, which are taken by the expansion of the leaden coating of its projectile. Late experiments however, connected with iron-plated ships are developing muzzle-loading Armstrong guns, constructed on somewhat similar principles, but with simpler rifling, ranging in size up to the 600 ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... life and prevented the rifling of the house. And after you had poured water on Bates,—he’s ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... forced some brandy down Paul's throat, and undid his collar and his waistcoat. "A pocket inside the waistcoat! Very useful, very useful—and more papers, yes! Take a drop, my friend, it will do you good." Thus alternately ministering to Paul's bodily comfort and rifling his person of what valuables he carried, Dieppe offered to the philosophic mind a singular resemblance to a Finance Minister who takes a farthing off the duty on beer and puts a penny on ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... throat, the villain effectually prevented his calling for help, and at once commenced rifling his pockets, when the cooper arrived on the scene. A sudden blow admonished the robber that he had more than one to ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... wak'd at the crack. To be short, Ascyltos came in and briefly told us what he had done for our sakes: On this we got up; and as we were rigging our selves, it came into my head to kill the guard, and rifle the village; I told Ascyltos my mind. He liked the rifling well enough, but gave us a wish'd delivery without blood, for being acquainted with every corner of the house, he pick'd the lock of an inner-room where the movables lay, and bringing us into it, we lifted what was of most value, and got off while it was yet early in the morning; ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... fortunes. Forming in close order, they received the Vitellians' reckless and disordered charge, and at once flung them into confusion. Antonius pressed hard on the fugitives and cut down all who blocked his path. The others followed each his inclination, rifling the dead, capturing prisoners, seizing arms and horses. Meanwhile, summoned by their shouts of triumph, those who had just now been in full flight across the fields came hurrying back to share ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... was rifling his house, and injuriously treating its inmates, the Knight, unsuspicious of harm, was lying in the wigwam of Sassacus, which was distant but a mile or two from his own residence. Lying on his side, with ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... in the way of wines, stores, and provisions of all kinds, besides much gold and, it is sad to say, the rich plunder of the churches, including golden crosses, silver chalices, and altar cloths. Nowadays it gives one a positive shock to hear of English sailors rifling churches; but in those rough times, acts of sacrilege of this kind awakened but ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... tremendous; and when Arnold found that not only neighboring boys, but business expeditions from the city made a practice of rifling his mountain garden, he raged for one season and acted the next. When the first frost dropped the great burrs, he was on hand, with a posse of strong young fellows from the farms about. They beat and shook and harvested, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... the sacred relic, points to the Acropolis, the cemetery of dead divinities, and then once more to the urn at his feet. "'Vanity of vanities—all is vanity!' Gods and men may come and go, but Death 'goes on for ever.'" The scene changes, and he feigns to be present at the rifling of a barrow, the "tomb of the Athenian heroes" on the plain of Marathon, or one of the lonely tumuli on Sigeum and Rhoeteum, "the great and goodly tombs" of Achilles and Patroclus ("they twain in one golden urn"); of Antilochus, and of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... him overboard!" made it hard for him to believe the Revolution over, and the United States and England at peace. Even while they thus abused the captain, the rogues were feasting upon his provisions and drinking his wines; and only his firm refusal to give up his keys prevented their rifling his iron chest, and filling their pockets with his dollars. At last he began to feel that his life was no longer safe in the hands of his captors; and, though he had by him but three men of his original crew, he determined to attempt to ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... developed their new rifle powder the best European powder destroyed the rifling and accuracy of the gun at about 3,000 rounds. This American invention, therefore, has increased the life of military rifles by sevenfold. Say that an equipment of military rifles cost at the rate of, say, $20 each, and we will find that this ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... standing on the wheels, drawing out boxes and barrels and throwing them down into the road, where the ants swarmed to the attack. Not the Tigers alone, but a number of Ashby's men as well engaged in the general business. The latter, either not so hungry or more valiant to abstain from the smaller rifling, turned to the plunder of horses. There were horses enough, dead and wounded, along that frightful road. Others were unhurt, still harnessed to wagons, or corralled in fence corners, or huddled with prisoners in the trodden fields. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... both on board together, and standing at the crack of the door watched you sitting at dinner that evening. Elma told me that she believed that there was a plot against your life, but why she would not tell me. She evidently knew of the proposed rifling of the safe at the Consulate. Oberg himself was also on board, locked in his own cabin. Elma must have overheard some conversation between the Baron and one of the others, for she was in great fear ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... space to enter upon a disquisition concerning these progressive changes; but suffice it to say that nearly all the peculiar styles of fire-arms were well known at an early period, and that the rifling, etc., of guns and cannon, with the other modifications now adopted, are merely the development and consummation of old ideas. For instance, the rifled arquebuse was known and used at the close of the fifteenth century, and, although the rifled musket was not put in general use by the French ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... much like an oil well derrick. Inside it are two steel rails to fill grooves in the rocket. These guide the rocket much as rifling in a gun barrel guides a bullet. Prof. Goddard, when teaching at Princeton in 1912, evolved the idea of shooting a rocket to the moon by means of successive charges of explosive much as the new German rocket ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... the size of the first, without doors, its windows boarded up with thick ax-hewn slabs. The floor of this room had been wrenched loose and torn away; there were big chests still sunken in the soil beneath, the boxes crumbling and evidently broken in their hasty rifling. ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... of Potsdam's agents, seeking the bearer of this secret, which had caused the rifling of Miss Brooke's luggage when she fell under suspicion, thanks to her clandestine way of coming aboard; and through the same agency young Thackeray had been all but murdered when suspicion, for ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... me submit quietly, and they would not harm me, if I would yield up that which I wist of. I said I would sooner yield my life than my trust; whereupon they mastered me, and dragged me off my horse, and were rifling me, when I—knowing the Flemish accent of that drunken fellow of the Countess's—called out, "Shame on you, Ghisbert!" Then it was that he stabbed me, even at the moment when the holy Saints sent brave Percy and the rest to rush ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... positively assert the fact. Those articles in her bureau she herself might have disturbed. She might have taken a handkerchief in a hurry, hunted for something under the lingerie impatiently. Still she could not rid herself of the feeling that alien hands had been rifling ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... You are mistaken, doctor. Why he does ask one but for cups and horses, A rifling fly; none ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... given as to threats uttered by Peace against the Dysons in the July of 1876, and as to his arrest at Blackheath in the October of 1878. The revolver taken from Peace that night was produced, and it was shown that the rifling of the bullet extracted from Dyson's head was the same as that of the bullet fired from the revolver carried by Peace at the ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... that while his comrades had been attending on Giuseppe, the third Corsican (whom they called Ste, or Stephanu) had filled up his time by rifling our camp; and of all our possessions he had chosen to select our half-dozen spare muskets and a burst coffer, from which he now extracted and (for his comrade's admiration) held aloft our chiefest treasure—the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Indeed he felt himself deteriorate Already. Thereupon he sent down showers Of clattering stones, to emphasize his words, And leap the cliffs and tumble noisily Into the seething wave. And as for me, I railed at him and at ingratitude, While rifling of the basket he had slung Across his shoulders; then with right good will We fell to work, and feasted like the gods, Like laborers, or like eager workhouse folk At Yuletide dinner; or, to say the whole At once, like ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... for a little click, with chickens clucking in a field near by, the big breech-block which held the shell fast, sending all the power of the explosion out of the muzzle, was swung back and one looked through the shining tube of steel, with its rifling which caught the driving band and gave the shell its rotation and accuracy in its long journey, which would close when, descending at the end of its parabola, its nose struck building, earth, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... mother To run wild in the summer—a little wild. Sometimes he joins them for a day or two And sees old friends he somehow can't get near. They meet him in the general store at night, Pre-occupied with formidable mail, Rifling a printed letter as he talks. They seem afraid. He wouldn't have it so: Though a great scholar, he's a democrat, If not at heart, at least on principle. Lately when coming up to Lancaster His train being late he missed another ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... goods that they could finde there, who being come unto Rochester, according to their Commission, entred his house; and the first thing they did was, they turned out all his Servants; then they fell to rifling his goods, whereof the chief part of them were taken for the Kings use, the rest they took for themselves; then they came into his Library, which they found so replenished, and with such kind of Books, as it was thought ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... Chevalier's servant came from his master's lodgings, accompanied by the Hebrew; was heard to make inquiries as to the route the man intended to take on his way homewards; followed him, or preceded him rather, and was found in the act of rifling his victim by my police in the Kaiserwald. The man will confess nothing; but, on being searched, a large sum in gold was found on his person; and though it is with the utmost pain that I can bring myself to entertain such an opinion, and to implicate a gentleman of ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... night the bell sounded. I flung on my trousers, and went down with a pistol. I caught two burglars in the act of rifling the cupboard. I went to collar one; he struck me on the head with a crowbar—constable, show the crowbar—I staggered, but recovered myself, and fired at one of the burglars: he was just struggling through the window. He fell, and I thought he was dead, but he got ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... face made me suspect that she knew Mrs. Sloman to be sound asleep at this moment; but she said nothing, and waited respectfully until I had scribbled a hasty note, rifling Bessie's writing-desk for the envelope in which to put my card. Dear child! there lay my photograph, the first thing I saw as I raised the ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... account. She did not know that her white bonnet was such a matter of merriment to Margaret Dunscombe and the maid, that they could hardly contain themselves. She did not find out that Miss Margaret's fingers were busy with her paper of sweets, which only a good string and a sound knot kept her from rifling. Yet she felt very well that nobody there cared in the least for her sorrow. It mattered nothing; she wept on in her loneliness, and knew nothing that happened, till the carriage stopped on the wharf; even then she did not raise her head. Mrs. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... this wholesale species of poetical massacre, this rifling of old Etruscan tombs of their honourable spoil, a very pleasant ninny would that poetaster stand forth, whose inanely conceited daring exhibited specimens from his own mint, as medals in fit contrast ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... reassembled at an appointed rendezvous; if followed to the country from which they issued they broke into small parties. The cruelties they perpetrated were beyond belief. As it was impossible for them to remain more than a few hours on the same spot the utmost despatch was necessary in rifling any towns or villages into which they could force an entrance; every one whose appearance indicated the probability of his possessing money was immediately put to the most horrid torture till he either pointed out his hoard or died under the infliction. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell |
