"Riddled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Richard, which was in danger of going down and blowing up. The united efforts of both crews were necessary to extinguish the flames before they reached the magazine. She was kept afloat through the night, while the wounded and prisoners were transferred to the Serapis. Then the battered and riddled old hulk plunged downward bow foremost into the ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... question. It showed signs at once of mob violence. The snow in the garden was trampled down, the windows broken, and one of the lower ones smashed in as if an entry had been effected here. The door was riddled with bullet holes. Upon this being opened the destruction within was seen to be complete, rooms being strewn with broken furniture and ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... wide-open over his rifle-barrel. Sokwenna was still. Probably he was dead. Keok was sobbing in the cellar-pit. Then he saw a shape growing in the illumination, three or four of them, moving, alive. He waited until they were clearer, and he knew what they were thinking—that the bullet-riddled cabin had lost its power to fight. He prayed God it was Graham he was aiming at, and fired. The figure went down, sank into the earth as a dead man falls. Steadily he fired at the others—one, two, ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... of the Place du Huit Octobre, and with extraordinary coolness and rapidity fired shot after shot, so that several German soldiers were killed or wounded. The enemy brought up a machine gun and used it against this one man who tried to stop an army. He fell riddled with bullets, and was blown to pieces as ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... of God our Father, They come in the name of Christ our Brother, They come in the name of All Humanity, To give their gold, their labour, and their love To help the suffering souls in this war-riddled earth, The New Women of the Race— The New Camp Followers - The Centuries shall do honour ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... who had had a miscarriage three days previous; she suffered intense pain and a fetid discharge. A number of maggots were seen in the vagina, and the next day a mass about the size of an orange came away from the uterus, riddled with holes, and which contained a number of dead maggots, killed by the carbolic acid injection given soon after the miscarriage. The fact seems inexplicable, but after their expulsion the symptoms immediately ameliorated. This case recalls a somewhat similar ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... it grew a seat of scorn, Bare,—shameless,—till, for fresh disaster, From end to end, one April morn, 'Twas riddled like a pepper caster,— Drilled like a vellum of old time; And musing on this final mystery, The Poet left off scribbling rhyme, And ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... that another discomfiture or miscarriage will serve to put him in the saddle. If we are finally conquered, 't will not be by defeat in the field, but by the dirty politics with which this nation is riddled, and which makes a man general because he comes from the right State, and knows how ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... building had shut out the picture; it was impossible for her to know that the man and his burden had reached the balcony in safety. Even now, they might be lying on the terrace, riddled by bullets. The concentrated aim of the enemy had not escaped her horrified gaze. The cheering did not reach ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... their antagonists. The Spanish gunners, drafted from the army, could not manage the naval ordnance, and their shots flew high and scarcely touched the English ships. On the other hand, the Spanish vessels were riddled with shot, and men fell killed and wounded on every side. But the ships were too strongly built to be easily destroyed, and so the monsters continued to receive fearful blows, and sailed wearily and helplessly on. Toward night, Medina Sidonia, finding it impossible ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... you don't seem to see, Charity Oliver!" her friend exploded. "What you are arguing may do well enough for ordinary times. These are not ordinary times. With all the newspapers declaring that our country is riddled with German ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... worms, if spread out uniformly, would form in many places in the course of a year a layer 0.2 of an inch in thickness; so that at any rate this large amount is not deposited within the old unused burrows. If the burrows did not collapse, the whole ground would be first thickly riddled with holes to a depth of about ten inches, and in fifty years a hollow unsupported space, ten inches in depth, would be left. The holes left by the decay of successively formed roots of trees and plants must likewise collapse ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... tremendous canons of red sandstone, and in their sides are the habitations of human beings perched on every ledge in inaccessible positions. Major Powell, United States Geologist, expressed his amazement at seeing nothing for whole days but perpendicular cliffs everywhere riddled with human dwellings resembling the cells of a honeycomb. The apparently inaccessible heights were scaled by means of long poles with lateral teeth disposed like the rungs of a ladder, and inserted at intervals in ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... comfortable? In all the frigid town there was not a single fire, except in the little bricked holes full of charcoal over which the place does its cooking. Close to my hotel was the "Casa Serdan," its windows all broken and its stucco front riddled with bullet holes, for it was here that two brothers, barricading themselves against the government of Porfirio Diaz, spilled the first blood of the long series of revolutions and worse that has followed. Already the name of the ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... four great galliasses is already riddled with shot, to the great disarrangement of her "pulpits, chapels," and friars therein assistant. The fleet has to close round her, or Drake and Hawkins will sink her; in effecting which manoeuvre, the "principal galleon of Seville," in which are Pedro de Valdez and a host of blue-blooded ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... York you wanted me. This time you don't. I guess that's what makes the difference in the quality of my gray matter," said Nick. "I feel riddled with bullets, and they've hit me right where I live. I—I suppose you'll never forgive me, will you? If you only half guessed how little I meant to butt in, or be rude, or annoy you, ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... me to work that in, do you, into a speech to be delivered to an audience of boys, every one of whom is probably riddled with adenoids? Damn it, they'd rush the platform. Leave me, Bertie. Push off. That's all I ask you to do. Push off.... Ladies and gentlemen," said Gussie, in a low, soliloquizing sort of way, "I do not propose to detain ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... of Greece was thus finally effected. It was added to the European kingdoms, and now bids fair to be prosperous and happy. "Thus did the Old Hellas rise from the grave of nations. Scorched by fire, riddled by shot, baptized by blood, she emerged victorious from the conflict. She achieved her independence because she proved herself worthy of it; she was trained to manhood in the only school of real improvement,—the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... its head. At length, however, it appeared to be wounded, and retired to the high reeds along the shore. But it soon returned, snorting and blowing more furiously than ever, and continued its attack until its head was fairly riddled with bullets, and it rolled over ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... machine gun impressed on me that the sooner I landed the better. As I was then a long way over the lines, sinking fast towards the tree-tops, I had no alternative, so endeavoured to reach the village green. By this time the machine was literally riddled with bullets, though, luckily, I had not been touched. Before landing I overtook a German horseman, so thinking to introduce myself I dived on him from a low altitude, just passing over his head. Well, scare him I certainly did, poor ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... equestrian exercises, they seemed to sit their horses as though they actually formed part of the animal. They seldom fought in line, but, from the very beginning of an action, hung like a dense cloud on the front and flanks of the enemy, and riddled them with missiles, without, however, coming to close quarters. Like the Parthians of a later epoch, they waited until they had bewildered and reduced the foe by their ceaseless evolutions before giving the final charge which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... ammunition, awoke them where they lay on the straw of a stable, cursed them for aristocrats, and marched them outside to a convenient wall, at the foot of which sprawled half a dozen blood-soaked, bayoneted and bullet-riddled landlords and land owners ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... colonel commanding the 44th regiment, the scaling ladders had been forgotten, and it was impossible to mount the parapet. The ladders and fascines were sent for, in all haste, but the men, on the summit of the glacis, were, meanwhile, as targets to the enemy. They stood until riddled through and through, when they fell back in disorder. Pakenham, unconscious that Colonel Mullens, of the 44th, had neglected his orders, and only fancying that the troops being fairly in for it, were staggering only under ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... that had flown over the fort during the bombardment he obtained it in this wise: "The sailors from this ship," said he, "hauled down the flag, and one of them seized it and hid it in his bosom; there was not much left of it; it was riddled and torn. He brought it to me, declaring that no one had a right to it but the captain of the Chickasaw. I hardly knew what to do about it, but the man seemed so earnest I could not refuse to ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... so that the banks were higher than the heads of men standing on the upper decks of the steamers. The rebels were some distance back from the river, so that their fire was high and did us but little harm. Our smoke-stack was riddled with bullets, but there were only three men wounded on the boats, two of whom were soldiers. When I first went on deck I entered the captain's room adjoining the pilot-house, and threw myself on a sofa. I did not keep that position ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... what have you done? Nothing! Here he's been switching fire back and forth from the Andes,' I says, 'corking up one volcano and letting out another, and yet he ain't split a single plantation into ribbons so far. Has he, now? No. Well, ain't it astonishing? Why, he must have this whole territory riddled with pipe connections. Boys, I don't see how you can be so reckless,' I says, 'and ungrateful. How long do you expect him to look out for folks that don't appear to care whether they blow up or not? First you know, he'll get disgusted and turn the whole section into cinders. He must have ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... had operated as soon as they were no longer in danger of complications. We loaded them up on the ambulances which followed one upon the other before the door. Some of the patients came back a few minutes later, riddled with fragments of shell; the driver had not succeeded in dodging the shells, and he was often wounded himself. In like manner the stretcher-bearers as they passed along the road were often hit themselves, and were brought ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... Catholic. He was assisted by half-a-dozen counsel. He riddled the affidavits on the other side, and read voluminous ones on his own; bitterly animadverted upon the absence of an affidavit by the father; held up to the scorn of a civilized world the course pursued towards his meek and gentle ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... the War Office, M. Pgoud, inventor of "looping the loop," who was being congratulated by M. Messimy, Minister of War. He came here to get a new aeroplane, his own having been riddled through the wings by ninety-seven bullets and two shells when he was making a raid of one hundred and eighty miles into German territory. He naturally did not tell me where he went, but simply said he crossed ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... bullets and balls. The cannonade was instantly commenced. The missiles of death fell like hail stones into the crowded boats and upon the crowded decks. Many of the ships were sunk, others disabled, and but a few, torn and riddled, succeeded in escaping to sea, where the most of them also perished beneath the waves of the stormy Euxine. Such was the utter desolation of this one brief war tempest which ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... lee of the longboat—which was stowed on the main hatch—after receiving the first or second volley, and the closeness and deadly character of those volleys was borne witness to by the fact that the boat was literally riddled with bullet-holes, the missiles having evidently passed through and through her and probably laid low every one of those that we found on her starboard side. And if further evidence were needed it was to be found in the fact that the starboard bulwarks— almost as high and ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... from the left with ever-increasing speed, the whole French line burst into a tornado of thunder and flame, but not a shot was fired from the English lines. Shells hurtled and screamed through the air, topworks were smashed into scrap-iron, funnels riddled, and military masts demolished; but until the Britain reached the centre of the French line ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... channelled openings—finally, forcing their way through the layers, have formed these gigantic defiles, now the marvel of geologists. If the rivers flow in an unbroken stream in these deep gorges, on the contrary, water is altogether absent from the plateaux above. The ground, riddled everywhere into holes and fissures, is hardly moistened by a shower. The rain, as if falling through a sieve, immediately disappears. In some places the chasms of rock have widened, the intermediate projections given way, and huge ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... cried Griffith, facing the party that held the outer door; "give way, or you shall be riddled with our pikes!" ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... stretched around them to endless distances, with no other lights than the stars that riddled the ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... through the little square where I had left my horse. It had been the scene of a fierce encounter which had left many dead and dying, among whom I saw my stubborn horse, its back broken by a cannon-ball, and its body riddled by bullets!.... From there I made for the outskirts in something of a hurry because the burning houses were collapsing on all sides and I was afraid of being buried beneath the debris. At last I got out of the town and reached the edge ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Neergard, "that it borders the railroad on the north; and where the land is not wavy it's flat as a pancake, and"—he sank his husky voice—"it's fairly riddled with water. I paid a thousand dollars for ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... said he. "Left without a word to anybody. When they went to her room they found it empty, with a five-dollar bill pinned to the riddled cushion. As nobody saw her go, we are as much ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... madness as the anger of Heaven but rarely permits among men! From cellar or from garret, from open street in front, from successive corners of cross-streets on each hand, Chateau-Vieux and Patriotism keep up the murderous rolling-fire, on murderous not Unpatriotic fires. Your blue National Captain, riddled with balls, one hardly knows on whose side fighting, requests to be laid on the colours to die: the patriotic Woman (name not given, deed surviving) screams to Chateau-Vieux that it must not fire the other cannon; and even flings a pail of water on it, since screaming ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Captain G. Chadwick, was sent as reinforcements. A stream of wounded (Manchesters, Worcesters, Munsters) began to file past our lines into the winding nullah. We knew little as to what had happened. The sky above the shell-riddled ridge of Achi Baba was serene and purple in the glow of evening, but the fog ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... line, so that the approach along each is commanded by the house that stands across its end. One of these houses appears to have been a citadel of the disaffected, and most of the fighting was at and near this spot. Artillery had been brought up against the house in question, which was completely riddled, though less injured by round-shot than one could have thought possible. The windows were broken, and the ceilings of the upper rooms were absolutely torn to pieces by musket-balls, that had entered on the rise. Some twenty or thirty dead were found ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of him only once. I prepared myself. I wrote out a passage from Shakespeare—it may have been the very one I quoted a while ago, I don't remember—and riddled it with his wild steamboatful interlardings. When an unrisky opportunity offered, one lovely summer day, when we had sounded and buoyed a tangled patch of crossings known as Hell's Half Acre, and were aboard again and he had sneaked the Pennsylvania triumphantly through it without once ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Indeed, they are a positive danger, for they pierce the wooden piles of piers, and weaken them. They cannot pierce through iron, however, and so iron plates or nails are used to protect the piles from their onslaughts. You will often see stones and rocks riddled by the Piddock as if they were as soft as cheese. Chalk, sandstone, or oak, it is all the same to the Piddock, which rasps them away with its file. When the points of this strange instrument are worn out with all this hard wear, a new set ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... bear-hide proved a tax upon their strength, even though the bullet-riddled head-piece had been carefully cut off and buried, lest those queer holes tell a risky tale on close examination; but Ixtli, as well as Bruno, was upborne by an exaltation such as neither had known before ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... mainland beach to police, variety lends her charms to the pursuit of the Beachcomber. Landing in one of the unfrequented coves, he knows not what the winds and the tides may have spread out for inspection and acceptance. Perhaps only an odd coco-nut from the Solomon Islands, its husk riddled by cobra and zoned with barnacles. The germ of life may yet be there. To plant the nut above high-water mark is an obvious duty. Perhaps there is a paddle, with rude tracery on the handle, from the New Hebrides, part of a Fijian canoe that has been bundled over ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Do you love your country, sir? Can you look on while our own states defy us, and not lift a hand? Can you sit still while the Governor and all the secessionists in this state are plotting to take Missouri, too, out of the Union? The militia is riddled with rebels, and the rest are ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... visited the scene of the battle in company with the notorious Slade, who was then division agent, says: "The coaches were still standing as they were placed by the party in the fight, completely riddled with bullets and arrows. Every vestige of leather straps and cushions was stripped off, the mail-sacks cut open, their contents thrown out, and the sacks themselves carried off. Valuable letters, drafts, and bills for large amounts were scattered all over the ground. This mail was gathered ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... block of stone—not a hearth-stone, but a block of fine granite—and hammered away. "What are you doing?" said Africaner. "Smoothing my shirt," replied his white friend. "That is one way," said he, and so it was, for on holding the shirt up to the light it was seen to be riddled with holes. "When I left the country," said Moffat, "I had not half-a-dozen shirts with ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... dies, it is generally found that a tangled growth of more or less contentious literature has already gathered round his name during his lifetime. He has been so written about, so talked about, so riddled with praise or blame, that, to those who have never seen him in the flesh, he has become almost a tradition, a myth—and one runs the risk of losing all clew to ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... shadows the troopers aimed At his voice and the pistol sound, With the rifle flashes the darkness flamed, He staggered and spun around, And they riddled his body with rifle balls As it lay on the ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... Collyer says we never have any logic on our platform, as if we had not been so logical in all our positions for the last twenty years that the dear men had no answer to make. Poor fellows! as they saw their outposts, one after another taken, their fortresses riddled through and through, their own guns turned on their defenseless heads, and such fifty-pounders as "taxation without representation," "all men created equal," "no just government can be formed without ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... scarcely strong enough for self-defence, having sent out detachments in different directions. The express had narrowly escaped with his life, having been fired upon repeatedly, his horse shot under him, and his clothes riddled with bullets. The roads, he said, were infested by savages; none but hunters, who knew how to thread the forests at night, could ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... through which she had recently passed, Sir James Wallace would not haul down his flag and opposed a desperate resistance to the whole of the French fleet, and did not surrender until the Experiment was completely dismasted and riddled with shot. ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... flowers in a neighboring field, the druggist, who was less ambitious, treated the saloon-keeping cousin to a glass of vermouth, seated at the billiard-table, which was covered with dead flies. They breakfasted under a vineless arbor, which the hot noonday sun riddled with its rays. But what of that? They were pleased and contented all the same. Madame Bayard had hung her hat on the lattice; and her husband, wearing a bargeman's straw helmet, which had been lent to him by the saloon-keeper, cut up the duck in the best of spirits. ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... pedant—his voice, so close at hand, startling the astonished baron, who had believed himself alone, and safe from intrusion—"that shirt has verily a valiant and triumphant air. It looks as if it had been worn by Mars himself in battle, so riddled has it been by lances, spears, darts, arrows, and I know not what besides. Don't be ashamed of it, Baron!—these holes are honourable to you. Many a shirt of fine linen, ruffled and embroidered, according to the latest fashion, disguises the graceless person of some rascally ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... hundred and twenty yards, and that so quickly that he scarce seemed to take time to aim at all, and the others are well-nigh as skilful. Yesterday I put up a breastplate such as is worn by our men-at- arms and asked them to shoot at it at eighty yards. They fired a volley together at it. It was riddled like a colander; not one of the five-and- twenty arrows had failed ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... teeth with rage and disappointment. The following day search was made for him, under instructions from Mr. Cameron and Houston, who offered a large reward for him, living or dead. His body was found in an old, abandoned shaft on the mountain side, riddled with bullets. The vengeance of the miners, desperate from the loss of homes and employment, had overtaken him first. He was buried hastily and with little ceremony, his two sons having already taken ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... is pretty well when they have given their blood to France for twenty years, when they have made ten, fifteen, and twenty campaigns, and wear three chevrons, and are riddled with wounds, to hear that their old chiefs are driven from their posts, their daughters turned out of the schools, and that the sons of those people are to be their officers forever—that delights them, Father Goulden!" and his face quivered ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... disaster. And these events, then close at hand, were to deal the death-blow to papal independence. The papacy was driven to bay, and those to whom the last defence was confided were certainly justified in employing every means in their power for strengthening their position. That Rome herself was riddled with rotten conspiracies, and turned into a hunting-ground for political spies, while the support she received from Louis Napoleon had been already partially withdrawn, proves only how hard was the task of that ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... had endeavoured to cross the flat land and get shelter, wresting his gun and felling him to the earth with the butt of it, then securing the rifle firing at and killing the other Indian. While doing this, he was exposed to the fire of a score of guns, getting riddled with buck-shot and being struck with bullets. But the greatest daring and bravery were exhibited by Watson, of the Toronto School of Infantry. Finding it impossible to dislodge the enemy, he rushed headlong for the ambuscaded half-breeds, followed by ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... mast but her foremast, and the English ship was in almost as bad a plight. Both ships were badly riddled by shot, and their crews were decimated. It seemed as though, unless some decisive move were made to end the conflict, that the combatants would be exterminated to ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... about that in the secondary stage there may be wide differences in the amount and the location of the damage done by syphilis. One patient may have a violent eruption, and very little else. Another will scarcely show an outward sign of the disease and yet will be riddled by one destructive internal change after another. In such a case the secondary stage of the disease may pass with half a dozen red spots on the body and no constitutional symptoms, and the patient go to pieces a few years later with locomotor ataxia or general paralysis ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... behind him a numerous staff of young warriors, whose complexions had been browned by the sun of Egypt and Italy, and who had been engaged in more battles than they numbered years When the colours of the 96th, 43d, and 34th demi-brigades, or rather their flagstaffs surmounted by some shreds, riddled by balls and blackened by powder, passed before him, he raised his hat and inclined his head in token of respect. Every homage thus paid by a great captain to standards which had been mutilated on the field of battle was saluted by a thousand acclamations. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... effect, John had thought, might be due to distance, but here it was a silent ruin, tragic and terrible. Over this village, once so neat and trim, as he could easily see, war had swept in its most hideous fashion. Houses were riddled and the gray light showed through them from wall to wall where the great shells had passed. A bronze statue standing in a fountain in the center of the little place or square had been struck, and it lay prone and shattered ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... His first impulse was to jump in the water and dive for it, which he did. Rose was close behind him, and formed his men on the bank ready to shoot him as he rose. In a few seconds he came up to breathe; and scarce had his head reached the surface of the water when it was completely riddled with the shot of their guns, and he ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... there was a crackle of brush about him as the black trees streamed past. The thrill of the pursuit possessed him; after weeks of patient labor, he felt the exhilaration of the wild night ride. The trail, he knew, was riddled here and there with gopher holes and partly grown with brush that might bring his horse down, but this did not count. He was glad, however, that the teamster was behind him, because he could see the dim gap ahead between the mass of trees, and he thought ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... in the world, sir. They were too astounded at first to bolt below. Men were falling right and left like ninepins. It's a miracle that Monygham, standing on the after-hatch with the rope already round his neck, escaped being riddled through and through like a sieve. He told me since that he had given himself up for lost, and kept on yelling with all the strength of his lungs: 'Hoist a white flag! Hoist a white flag!' Suddenly an old major of the Esmeralda regiment, standing by, unsheathed his sword with ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... its body dark all over. Anatomically, it's distinguished from the white whale and the black right whale by the fusion of its seven cervical vertebrae, and it numbers two more ribs than its relatives. Floating on its side, its belly riddled with bites, the poor cetacean was dead. Still hanging from the tip of its mutilated fin was a little baby whale that it had been unable to rescue from the slaughter. Its open mouth let water flow through its ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... now or never!" thought Tom. Once more he shifted his direction, and then, as he had his gun aimed just where he wanted it, he pressed the lever and a burst of bullets shot out and fairly riddled the red plane. It seemed to stop for an instant in the air, and then, quivering, turned and went down in ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... almost indestructible, the sap-wood quickly decays, and is rejected in using the timber for any important purpose. Pieces of the sap adhering to the heart-wood of which the old oak coffers were made, may often be found riddled with worm holes and almost gone to dust, while the remainder of the chest is as sound as the day it was made two ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... This high, perpendicular rock, facing the south to a length of some hundreds of yards and riddled with holes like a monstrous sponge, is the time-honored dwelling place of the hairy-footed Anthophora and of her rent free tenant, the three-horned Osmia. Here also swarm their exterminators: the Sitaris beetle, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... will be now and then to "go one better"—to use the American phrase; and accordingly here was an amendment from Birmingham which went even further than the Bill of Mr. Asquith. With gentle but effective ridicule Mr. Asquith, riddled the Chamberlain amendment; but for the moment the amendment served the purpose of delaying ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... canoes. In vain they turned and paddled their hardest for the shore they had left. The enemy gained on them rapidly and opened fire. At the first discharge the Indian was killed and the canoe was so riddled that it was sinking, when the Iroquois ranged alongside ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... fetched a lump of quick-lime from the kiln, where they burned quantities of it to scatter over the clay-soil, and first wetting it with water till it fell into powder, and then mixing it with sand which he riddled from the gravel he dug from the garden, he made it into good strong mortar. When its bed was at length made for it, he took the wheel and put in a longer axis, to project on one side beyond the gudgeon-block, or hollow in which it turned; and upon this projecting ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... a man, instead of a bass, who made me such a proposal,' replied the captain, 'I should have had a word or two to say to him about it. Know, sir, that Captain Garnier never runs away! He fights till his vessel is riddled like a sieve, then he allows himself to be boarded, and when his decks are covered with the enemy, he goes into the powder magazine with his pipe in his mouth, shakes out the burning ashes, and sends the English on a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... visionaries, who had more courage than intelligence, more desire to do right than discernment to sift right from wrong? Pity that so many daring, honest men should have been spitted on rapiers, cloven with sabres, riddled with bullet-holes, for the sake of a vain breath, emptier than the glass he had raised to his lips last night! And yet—he might search, and deny, and argue, and scoff—honour remained a fact. No, not a fact, a law. A law having rules, and conditions and penalties ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... the moment they are in a body, whether in mobs or in senates, have always a ready executioner amongst them, called sarcasm. There is no torture to be compared to that of the wretch condemned to execution by ridicule. This was Gwynplaine's fate. He was stoned with their jokes, and riddled by the scoffs shot at him. He stood there a mark for all. They sprang up; they cried, "Encore;" they shook with laughter; they stamped their feet; they pulled each other's bands. The majesty of the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... hands and awestruck eyes, and, although all the changes which had been wrought by her indefatigable fingers could not be appreciated by him, as it was so long since he had seen the room, he missed something. The suit, hanging for years upon its common nail, till it was encrusted with flyspecks, riddled with moth-holes, and tarnished, rusty and faded, now covered his meagre frame, but the other things he looked for he failed to find. He gazed at the walls, perceiving the one old, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... had cleaned that German trench! And they brought back the body of a man—nailed to a rude crucifix. The thing was more like a T than a cross. It was made of planks, perhaps two by five, and the man was spiked on by his hands and feet. Across the abdomen he was riddled with bullets and again with another row a little higher up near his chest. The man was the sergeant I had talked to earlier in the night. What had happened was this. He had, no doubt, been taken by a ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... formidable antagonist, and volleys of Spanish shot were spent upon it. On the following evening a fireship was despatched; but this also was a failure. A sudden calm prevented her progress. She was riddled through and through by the enemy's guns, and, rapidly gaining water in consequence, had to be fired so much too soon that she exploded before getting near enough to work any serious ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... either side in strange contrast to the scenery when last I rode in that bus. I am sure I rode in the same bus before the war in my daily trips to the Paris office of THE NEW YORK TIMES. Its sides are bullet riddled now, but the soldier conductor still jingles the bell to the motorman, although he carries a revolver where he used to wear ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the tread of his old veterans. With his little remaining strength he arose and dragged himself to the window. As he gazed upon those battle-flags dipping to him in salute, those precious standards bullet-riddled, battle-stained, but remnants of their former selves, with scarcely enough left of them on which to print the names of the battles they had seen, his eyes once more kindled with the flames which had lighted them at Shiloh, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... one that escaped, he claiming to have jumped off from the stage. I saw the stage when it came into Salt Lake City, and it was riddled with bullets and blood spattered all over the ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... in a word, that women of her disposition and station are compelled to show. Who has not seen how women bully women? What tortures have men to endure, comparable to those daily repeated shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women are riddled by the tyrants of their sex? Poor victims! But we are starting from our proposition, which is, that Miss Crawley was always particularly annoying and savage when she was rallying from illness—as they say wounds tingle most when they are about ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... silent night. Really she had lived for it, ever since she entered the hut and found the strange woman. The night at Raven's house had been as still as this, but there were invisible disturbances in the air; they riddled her chamber through and pierced her brain: what Amelia thought, what Dick thought. Here there was only the calm island of Charlotte's beneficence, and even that lay stiller than ever under the blanket of a tranquil sleep. She felt alone ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... dear, go away! How you do worry, jumping and dancing about! And what a stupid, good-for-nothing leaf you've brought! Fetch me one that's not completely riddled with caterpillar holes." ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... of her, and at the word 'Fire!' every gun went off at once, slap into her, and the old Captain reeled at the discharge, as if she was drunk. I wish you'd only seen how we pitched it into this Holy Trinity; she was holy enough before we had done with her, riddled like a sieve, several of her ports knocked into one, and every scupper of her running blood and water. Not but what she stood to it as bold as brass, and gave us nearly gun for gun, and made a very pretty general average in our ship's company. ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... "Get out of my way! I'll settle 'em! Get out of my way!" And he riddled Carlo Trent with a fusillade ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... when the enemy were about to point one of their most powerful batteries in the direction of a certain farm-house occupied by the President, Lee sent a courier in haste to inform him of it. No sooner had the President escaped than a storm of shot and shell riddled ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... he would stop to say in an awesome whisper, "Come out here, you little devils!" and bang would go his rifle at the stovepipe, which was riddled with holes. Then once more in a loud voice he would hurry ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... secretive. But over a year later, the news reached Nelsen at Post Eight. A man named Miguel Ramos had got back, more dead than alive, after a successful venture, alone, to the immediate vicinity of the Ringed Planet. His vehicle was riddled. He was ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... badly smashed up, bore the mark of a bullet in a rear tire and one in the lower part of the body. It was believed that the young man, being pursued by bandits and having attempted to escape, had had his car riddled by bullets and had been ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... forward toward the open door. April dusk, the color of cold dish-water, showed through it. Dusk in the city comes sadly, crowding into narrow streets and riddled with an immediate quick-shot ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... the burning vessel enabled the whole of the terrible scene to be clearly witnessed. Half the ships were partly or wholly dismasted, the rigging was cut to pieces, and the sails were riddled with balls. The splintered sides, bulwarks shot away, and port-holes blown into one, showed how terrible was the damage inflicted on both sides. Higher and higher rose the flames on board the Orient. Men could be ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... a score of rifles sounded in the pass, and the horrified lad saw fully one half of the soldiers topple out of their saddles, riddled by the balls that had been fired from a skillfully arranged ambush. At the same time several horses reared, plunged and fell, fatally wounded by others of ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... explain that across the Bay of Katleean in the shadow of the great blue glacier which was discernible on sunny days, there had been a lonely Thlinget graveyard. Because of its isolation this burial place had been so riddled with re-opened graves and so much killing, torturing and fighting had ensued among the Indians in their efforts to detect and punish so-called witches that he, their White Chief, had been obliged to interfere. He had put an end to the reign of sorcery in that particular graveyard ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... part of the lunar surface is simply riddled with tiny craterlets, and some of them are utilised as tests for the definition of our telescopes. I have heard it remarked that a map of this part of the moon presents almost the appearance of the froth ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... battalion, but here the rebel musketry opened. A sheet of flame, sudden as lightning, red as blood, and so near that it seemed to singe the men's faces, burst along the rebel breastwork, and the ground and trees close behind our line was ploughed and riddled with a thousand balls that just missed the heads of the men. The battalion dropped flat on the ground, and the second volley, like the first, nearly all went over. Several men were struck, but not ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... made strenuous efforts to get in. They suffered heavy losses from the musketry of the defence, and their dead lay scattered thickly on the approaches. Nor were they removed till nightfall. Many Ghazis, mad with fanaticism, pressed on carrying standards, heedless of the fire, until they fell riddled with bullets under ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... about twelve feet square, having high, smooth walls on every side, and into it there came neither sun nor wind. In one corner a clump of rusty-looking sweet-pea was climbing up the wall—every leaf of this plant was riddled with holes, and there were no flowers on it. Another corner was occupied by dwarf nasturtiums, and on this plant, in despite of every discouragement, two flowers were blooming, but its leaves also were tattered and dejected. ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... the next moment four of the eight boilers exploded with a thunderous crash, and the whole forward third of the boat was hoisted toward the sky! The main part of the mass, with the chimneys, dropped upon the boat again, a mountain of riddled and chaotic rubbish—and then, after a little, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... factory was burning, and across the field were the Germans. The cottages without doors and windows were like toothless old women. Piles of used cartridges were strewed around. There stood a gray motor-car, a wounded German in the back seat, his hands riddled, the car shot through, with blood in the bottom from two dead Germans. I realized the power of the bullet, which had penetrated the driver, the padded seat, the sheet metal and splintered the wood of the tonneau. We saw a puff of white smoke over the field from a shrapnel. That was the ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... the demolition of part of an old log cabin which was being riddled by termites. Many of the ordinary logs were in ruins but the walnut boards which had served as weather-boarding over the ends of some of the termite-infested logs were as sound and as beautifully preserved as they had been ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... raged fiercely on the left. The woods were riddled with bullets; the dead and wounded of the rebels were taken away from this part of the field, but I am informed by one accustomed to judge, and who went over the field to-day, that from the pools of blood and other evidences the loss must have been severe. Finding that the left could not ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... fire, smoke, and debris sprang from the middle of the grotto, enlarging as it mounted. The large walls of silex tottered and fell upon the sand, and the sand itself, an instrument of pain when launched from its hard bed, riddled the faces with its myriad cutting atoms. Shrieks, imprecations, human life, dead bodies—all were ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... over the slope already thickly dotted with the bodies of our dead and wounded, and at the close of the disastrous day several gallant Highlanders were found lying dead across the wire entanglements within 150 yards of the Boers, riddled with bullets. The 12th Lancers dismounted, and at one moment, advanced as infantry right up to the Boer trenches. Every one I spoke to expressed the warmest admiration for their ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... rocks. It was not hail-stones, but regular lumps of ice, as large as one's hand, which fell from the stormy clouds. A waterspout could not have come down with more violence, and sundry big bruises warned Paganel and Robert to retreat. The wagon was riddled in several places, and few coverings would have held out against those sharp icicles, some of which had fastened themselves into the trunks of the trees. It was impossible to go on till this tremendous shower was over, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Ocean has His darker hints; but where's the element That chequers not its usefulness to man With casual terror? Scathes not earth sometimes Her children with Tartarean fires, or shakes Their shrieking cities, and, with one last clang Or hells for their own ruin, strews them flat As riddled ashes—silent as the grave. Walks not Contagion on the Air itself? I should—old Ocean's Saturnalian days And roaring nights of revelry and sport With wreck and human woe—be loth to sing; For they are few, and all their ills weigh light Against his sacred ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... behind our guns was a farmhouse, outbuildings, and yard full of trees. Shells aimed at us, rained into those premises all day. The house was riddled like a sieve, the trees were cut down, and the outbuildings, barn, stables, sheds, etc., were reduced to a ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... meet her attack. Under a rain of fire from the Union ships, and from share fortifications too distant to be effective, the Merrimac rammed and sank the sloop-of-war Cumberland, and then, after driving the frigate Congress aground, riddled her with shells. Towards nightfall the Confederate vessel moved dawn stream, to continue the ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Cualnge?" "Thy fosterling is before thee," he replied, "and fosterling of the men of Ulster and of Conchobar as well, Cuchulain son of Sualtaim [4]and sister's son to Conchobar," replied Cuchalain.[4] "And thou didst promise to flee before me what time I should be wounded, in pools of gore and riddled in the battle of the Tain.[a] For, [5]when thou hadst not thy sword with thee,[5] I did flee before thee in thine own combat on the Tain; [6]and do thou avoid me," said he. "Even that did I promise," Fergus answered. "Away with thee, then!" cried Cuchulain. "'Tis ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... who occupied the Lewis mansion resolutely continued the battle, firing through the doors and windows with such steadiness that the Fenians were glad to get under cover behind a pile of cordwood, from which place of security they fairly riddled the house with bullets. How the Canadians in this old frame building escaped the deadly missiles is a miracle, for, strange to say, none were injured, although exposed to a perfect hail-storm of bullets which crashed through the thin boards, lath and plaster, ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... blue men came to a sudden halt at close and disastrous range and roared a swift volley. The group in gray was split and broken by this fire, but its riddled body still fought. The men in blue yelled again and rushed ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Irish blood brooked to follow their example, or perhaps fully perceived the urgency of the need, till a volley of bullets were whistling about their ears, though happily without injury, the mast and the rigging having protected them, for the sail was riddled with holes, and the smoke dimmed their vision as the report sounded in their ears. In another second the turbaned, scimitared figures were leaping on board. The Genoese still lay flat offering no resistance, but Lanty and Arthur stood on either side of the ladder, and hurled back the two ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brigade of guards—out of the corn they rise and front the three battalions of Michel's chasseurs who were the first to reach the highest point of the hill. They fire and Death with his scythe has laid three hundred low. The tricolour flag is riddled with grapeshot and General Michel ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... stopping the bombardment and of concentrating the enemy's attention upon his own safety. The tugs advanced gallantly to the onset, six of them rushing almost simultaneously upon the "Vittoria." That vessel met them with a broadside which sank four at once, and the other two were riddled by shell from Hotchkiss revolving cannon from the decks of the Spaniard; their machinery was crippled, and they drifted helplessly out to sea. Of the others, some ran aground on the bank, some were sunk, and not one succeeded in exploding her torpedo near a Spanish vessel. The ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... magazines?" As it sank into Verena's mind more deeply that the contributions of this remarkable young man had been rejected—contributions in which, apparently, everything she held dear was riddled with scorn—she felt a strange pity and sadness, a sense of injustice. "I am very sorry you can't get published," she said, so simply that he looked up at her, from the figure he was scratching on the asphalt ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... name out. It seemed queer that he was missing. It seemed quite hopeless now. Three or four days dragged on. Everything continued as usual. We went up past the place where we had left them, and there was no news, no sign. They just vanished. No one saw them again, and except for the "riddled" rumour of the poor old sergeant the whole thing ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... the survey of the moon was being completed; she appeared riddled with craters, and her essentially volcanic nature was affirmed by each observation. From the absence of refraction in the rays of the planets occulted by her it is concluded that she can have no atmosphere. This absence of air entails absence of water; it therefore became manifest that ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... An ark is a house-boat of small though comfortable dimensions, and is as necessary to the Upper Bay fisherman as are nets and boats. We were both curious to see Big Alec's ark, for history said that it had been the scene of more than one pitched battle, and that it was riddled with bullet-holes. ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... drum beat to evening quarters. I was stationed to the four aftermost carronades on the quarter-deck. I had run up in a hurry; and at that period, straps to keep down the trousers not having been invented, my white jeans were riddled a good deal up the leg. I passed the captain, touched my hat, and began to muster my men. Unconscious of any offence, I stole a look at my commander, but met with no good-humoured glance in return. He had screwed up his little yellow physiognomy into ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... eloquence, though, heaven knows, there were other things to cry over besides his sonorous periods. After which a connection, James Lamert by name, who had lived with the family before they moved from Camden Town to Gower Street, and was manager of a worm-eaten, rat-riddled blacking business, near old Hungerford Market, offered to employ the lad, on a salary of some six shillings a week, or thereabouts. The duties which commanded these high emoluments consisted of the tying up and labelling of blacking pots. At first Charles, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials |
