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Pirate   Listen
verb
Pirate  v. t.  To publish, as books or writings, without the permission of the author. "They advertised they would pirate his edition."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pirate" Quotes from Famous Books



... wanderers of the white race. Anarchy prevailed in many parts; usurping nobles enslaved the people in their houses; and piratical fleets scoured the sea, capturing and enslaving yearly thousands of peaceful traders, women and children. The writer was himself in 1862 besieged in a Bornean river by a pirate fleet, which was eventually destroyed by a Sarawak Government steamer with the following result of the fight: 190 pirates and 140 captives were killed or drowned, and 250 of the latter were liberated and sent to their homes; showing how formidable these pirates ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... younger, that ardent pirate of her heart, the maiden struck her flaming flag, and on the same night, with fearful dismay, she sought pardon of the elder brother that she could not yield him like surrender. With pale appealing face and kind blue eyes, she ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... apparently to cut off our escape in that direction. But he was playing a deeper game. A long, dark, unbroken cloud was passing over the moon, which threw its black shadow over the water, and partially concealed the movements of the pirate. When it cleared away again, he was braced sharp up on the larboard tack, standing across our bows, with the intention ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... of "Memoranda" sketches have properly found oblivion to-day. They were all, or nearly all, collected by a Canadian pirate, C. A. Backas, in a volume bearing the title of Memoranda,—[Also by a harpy named John Camden Hotten (of London), of whom we shall hear again. Hotten had already pirated The Innocents, and had it on the market before Routledge could bring out the authorized ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... birds' alarm. Hovering in the air was a large hawk, about to pounce down upon the little songsters. They called to Captain Twopenny, who was approaching his cottage. He ran in for his gun, and in another instant the savage pirate fell to the ground. Instead of flying away at the report, the little birds seemed to comprehend the service which had been rendered them, and kept flying round and round the cottages, or settling on the roofs, as if perfectly satisfied that no harm was intended them. Harry, who soon ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... a darkness, withdraws itself into a secrecy unapproachable by eyesight, or by filial love, or by guesses of the brain—and that is the death of oedipus. Did he die? Even that is more than we can say. How dreadful does the sound fall upon the heart of some poor, horror-stricken criminal, pirate or murderer, that has offended by a mere human offence, when, at nightfall, tempted by the sweet spectacle of a peaceful hearth, he creeps stealthily into some village inn, and hopes for one night's respite ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... covers, at the gray boards, which were the liveries of literature in those early days; at the first editions, with their inscriptions in the author's handwriting, or in Maria's pretty caligraphy. There was the PIRATE in its original volumes, and Mackintosh's MEMOIRS, and Mrs. Barbauld's ESSAYS, and Descartes's ESSAYS, that Arthur Hallam liked to read; Hallam's CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY, and Rogers's POEMS, were ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth

... Admiral Coligny the year before, and barbarously destroyed by the Spaniards soon after Hawkins's departure.[14] The difference between our age and Queen Elizabeth's is illustrated by the fact that Hawkins, instead of being put to death as a pirate for engaging in the slave-trade, was rewarded by the queen on his return with a patent for a ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... to the Portuguese, the latter sailed and fought their way around Africa to India, and past the golden Chersonese. In 1542, exactly fifty years after the discovery of America, Dai Nippon was reached. Mendez Pinto, on a Chinese pirate junk which had been driven by a storm away from her companions, set foot upon an island called Tanegashima. This name among the country folks is still synonymous with guns and pistols, for Pinto introduced fire-arms, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... min'ster o' the gospel, o' the Methodis' denomineye-tion, an' I'm deteyined agin my will along o' a pirate ship which has robbed certain parties o' val-able goods. Which syme I'm pre-pared to attest afore a no'try publick, an' lodge informeye-tion o' crime. An',' s'ys he, 'I demand the protection o' the authorities an' arsk to be directed ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... they know me all right. Especially that red and white hen. She's got a lame wing since yesterday, and if I don't watch, the others would drive her off. The pouter brute yonder, for instance. He's a regular pirate. Wants all the wheat himself. Don't ever seem to ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... of wealth and an exchange of commodities, if rapine and piracy could not be practised. The merchant was an adventurer, and politics, quite as much as trade, controlled his movements; for the line between trader, buccaneer, and pirate faded away before conditions which made treaties of no importance and peaceful relations dependent upon an absence of the hope of gain. A state of war was not necessary to prepare the way for attack and plunder in those far distant oceans, ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... one biographer, "is almost synonymous with genius and eccentricity,"[2] could claim our attention not only as a scientist of talent, but also as a statesman, soldier, pirate, lover, and a Roman Catholic possessed of sufficient piety and naked courage to attempt the conversion of Oliver Cromwell. Like his father, who was hanged for participation in the Gunpowder Plot, Digby was a political creature, and during the Civil War he ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... gentleman and hastened to explain that I was neither a pirate, a robber, nor an oppressor of the poor. This as counter-check to his tendency to flee, leaving me in sole charge. He understood a little Swahili, and talked a few words of something he intended for that language. By means of our mutual accomplishment ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... island was named for John CLIPPERTON, a pirate who made it his hideout early in the 18th century. Annexed by France in 1855, it was seized by Mexico in 1897. Arbitration eventually awarded the island to France, which took ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... is there between the figure of the conqueror and that of the pirate?" said the ancients. The difference only between the eagle and the vulture,—serenity ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... all, that acquaintance with the principles of honor and justice, with the higher obligations of morals and of general laws, human and divine, which constitutes the great distinction between the warrior-patriot and the licensed robber and pirate—these can be systematically taught and eminently acquired only in a permanent school, stationed upon the shore and provided with the teachers, the instruments, and the books conversant with and adapted to the communication of the principles of these ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams

... with many strong oaths, for I honestly believe the old pirate had got an affection for me. But he wasted his breath as far as I was concerned, my pride being then too fierce to admit of my shrinking from any terms that might be offered ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... a blooming merchantman," chuckled "Dye." "This reminds me of my boyhood days when I read pirate stories. Do you remember that yarn about Kydd, where he rigged painted canvas about his ship and hid all the ports, 'Stump'? It was great. The whole piratical crew, with the exception of a dozen men, kept ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... Norwegian pirate, named Naddod, was carried by a storm towards an island covered with snow, which he named Snoland (land of snow), a name changed later to that of Iceland (land of ice). There again the Northmen found the Irish monks ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... but I've killed many a pirate in my time. Now it's your chance. But it's blowin' great guns an' ye'd ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... comp'ny, I am," thinks I, handin' over a dollar thirty to the taxi pirate and paradin' in across the red carpet. "Now what is it I tell the butler when he ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford

... Quebec Emery de Caen had no other object in view than to secure his goods and take them to France. He had nothing to do with the war, and believed that he was sailing in times of peace. Thomas Kirke, by whom he was taken prisoner, treated him as a pirate, illegally, and in spite of the Treaty of Suze. It is true that the Kirkes ignored the existence of this treaty when they sailed for America, but this was only an excuse for ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... be recognised, though in a minor degree, the same gifted hand that portrayed the Mussulman, the pirate, the father, and the bigot, in two ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... Pirate. (Luxuriantly tropical. Monthly. Salter than the Sea. Sharper than Coral. Unmitigatedly murderous. ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... since it is Venus that we are going to visit, I don't look for much fighting. I'm glad you made it Venus instead of Mars, Edmund, for, from all I've heard of Mars with its fourteen-foot giants, I don't think I should like to try the pirate business in that direction." ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... is taut with action and breathless climaxes. Its principal character, a soldier, has for his friend a most engaging pirate. This combination alone makes interesting reading."—Chicago ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... working as a quarry. Some painstaking burgher had, I found, made a desperate attempt on one of the huge chimney lintels of the great hall of the erection,—an apartment which Sir Walter greatly admired, and in which he lays the scene in the "Pirate" between Cleveland and Jack Bunce, but the lintel, a curious example of what, in the exercise of a little Irish liberty, is sometimes termed a rectilinear arch, defied his utmost efforts; and, after half-picking out the keystone, he had to give it up in despair. The bishop's ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... "'Pirate, is it?' says I, landing him one—and at that first feel of my 'and along o' 'is cheek all these devils that I've been sufferin' from just ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... the aristocracy. Those who municipalized themselves became more enlightened, more lettered, more refined, and, at the same time, less chivalrous and less martial than their ancestors. The characters of buccaneer, land-pirate, knight-errant could not be conveniently united with those of banker, exchange broker, dealer in dry ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... bodes have come breathless to tell thee that Tostig, thy brother, with pirate and war-ship, is wasting thy shores and slaughtering ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... King's a pirate in business hours," Clay said, smiling. "All right, that's good. Now go tell ten of them to meet me at the round-house in half an hour. I will get MacWilliams to telegraph Kirkland to run an engine ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... village, and among other things thought the doors should be attended to. One of them particularly, the front-door, looked very badly, crusted, as it were, and as if it would be all the better for scraping. There happened to be a microscopist in the village who had heard the old pirate story, and he took it into his head to examine the crust on this door. There was no mistake about it; it was a genuine historical document, of the Ziska drum-head pattern,—a real cutis humana, stripped from some old Scandinavian filibuster, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... suppression of the slave-trade. In ports whence slave vessels formerly sailed with the connivance of the port officers, the administration has placed men who stand up to their duty, and for the first time in our history the slave-trader is convicted and hung as a pirate. This abominable secret traffic has been wholly demolished by the ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... chivalry, diplomacy, and literature followed in the lines of the trade-routes to the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Our mariners, like their type the "Shipman" in Chaucer (an anticipation of the "Venturer" of later days, with the pirate as yet, perhaps, more strongly marked in ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... to sleep in Hyde Park, I suppose," he said to himself, "or in one of his pirate's caves. What a story he could write if he had the talent. What a freak of chance which set him down here amongst us—well born and educated and yet as much a prisoner as the poorest. Some day we shall hear of him—I am convinced of it. We shall hear ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... I know. I have not yet looked at yours, but I shall ask —— about them. I recommend you to be cautious in your intercourse with him. Could I not be of use to you in many ways here? These printers, or rather misprinters, as they ought to be called to deserve their names, pirate your works, and give you nothing in return; this, surely, might be differently managed. I mean to send you some choruses shortly, even if obliged to compose some new ones, for this ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace

... village, in powdered wigs, red coats, gold lace, and swords, haunting the sand-dunes. God help the poor soul who may fall into their hands! This was a very pleasant story, and Hugh Seymour's thoughts often crept around and about it. He would like to find a pirate, to bring him to the vicarage, and present him to Mr. Lasher. He knew that Mrs. Lasher would say, "Fancy, a pirate. Well! now, fancy! Well, here's a pirate!" And that Mr. Lasher would say, "It's a pity, Hugh, that you don't choose your ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... find what had become of them. And as regards the vessel carrying the virgins, she ceased not sailing until she made port beside a ruined city wherein none was inhabitant, and here the crew cast anchor and furled their sails when behold, a gang of forty pirate[FN23] men, ever ready to cut the highway and their friends to betray, boarded them, crying in high glee, "Let us slay all in her and carry off whatso we find." When they appeared before the damsel they would have effected their intent; but she welcomed them and said, "Do ye return ashore: ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... the next morning, and on our way stepped over a large ship anchor that lay across the trail. I suppose the natives had undertaken to pack it across the isthmus and found it too heavy for them. Perhaps it was for Capt. Kidd, the great pirate, for it is said that he often visited Panama in the course of his cruising about in ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... in that case could Oscar have felt quite safe with you? You were more pugnacious than six Queensberrys rolled into one. When people asked, 'What has Frank Harris been?' the usual reply was, 'Obviously a pirate from ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... battle-scarred pirate glared to seaward with red-rimmed eyes in which flames of revenge started into life. His twisted, warped life had been spent in fighting and trickery; to-day his work had culminated in a brave stand for what he thought to be straight and right; reward he expected, but he had earned it with blood ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... in triumph would have out many flags. She must be an enemy. Hear now," said Arrius, becoming grave again, "hear, while yet I may speak. If the galley be a pirate, thy life is safe; they may not give thee freedom; they may put thee to the oar again; but they will not kill thee. On the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... captain, jovial even in spite of my mother, would annoy me frightfully by joking about my going to sea. He was always asking me when I meant to run away and be "a bloody pirate." He took it for granted I liked the sea, was thrilled by the sea, when the truth of it was that I hated the sea! It was business now, ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... pirate chum of yours when he read me your letter, that you would last in Texas just about a week, and that you would be shipped home in a box. They are not as tolerant with public nuisances down south as we are here. But what did you do there to ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck

... the mother on the brand with which her son was gored; Then sunk the grandsire on the floor, his grand-babes clutching wild; Then fled the maiden moaning faint, and nestled with the child; But see, yon pirate strangled lies, and crushed with splashing heel, While o'er him in an Irish hand there sweeps his Syrian steel— Though virtue sink, and courage fail, and misers yield their store, There's one hearth well avenged ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... Lung must certainly have been born under the influence of a very evil planet, for the literary quality of his profession did not entice his imagination at all, and his sole and frequently-expressed desire was to become a pirate. Nothing but the necessity of obtaining a large sum of money with which to purchase a formidable junk and to procure the services of a band of capable and bloodthirsty outlaws bound him to Ho Chow, unless, perchance, it might be the ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... in an angry sea, Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the side; Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free, Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide; Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... should tell it. Bud's telling at second-hand would not be conclusive. And he sincerely desired to save Walter from prison. For Walter Johnson was the victim of Dr. Small, or of Dr. Small and such novels as "The Pirate's Bride," "Claude Duval," "The Wild Rover of the West Indies," and the cheap biographies of such men as Murrell. Small found him with his imagination inflamed by the history of such heroes, and opened to him the path to ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... from his tone that he spoke the truth, and we all three accordingly lowered our weapons. By this time two of the pirate crew and several of the blacks whom we had seen at the village appeared, and by the mate's directions we delivered our arms ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... Channel, and to gather the towns of England under the same sceptre that swayed the citizens of Rouen. But before the coming of the Northmen, there are a few more slight facts that I must chronicle if only to explain the desert and the ruins that alone were Rouen when the first pirate galley swept up to the quay and anchored close to where the western door of the Cathedral now ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... seem to have been well grounded, for in the spring of 1613, Ma-ta-oka, being then about sixteen, was treacherously and "by stratagem" kidnapped by the bold and unscrupulous Captain Argall—half pirate, half trader,—and was held by the colonists as hostage ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... savage rule over the most ancient civilised people of Asia. Take England: its aristocracy at different times has consisted of the various barbaric invaders, first the Anglo-Saxon (if I must use that hateful and misleading word)—a pirate from Sleswick; then the Dane, another pirate from Denmark direct; then the Norman, a yet younger Danish pirate, with a thin veneer of early French culture, who came over from Normandy to better himself after ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... captain. He has risen from a sailor, and is considered by the Archontes rather in the light of a parvenu. He is courageous and enterprising, but a bit of a pirate. ...
— 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

... square of this sea must be paved with things which were once glorious in life and power. Maybe below where we are sailing here, helmeted Roman soldiers, being transported to some point of contemplated conquest, went down. Here pirate craft have roamed; here lumbering wheat ships have ploughed their way; here the watches have been set by the crews of a hundred nations; here sailors have been cursed in a thousand tongues. Along these shores ship-building had its birth; from these shores the ships sailed out over these waters, ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin

... assured, that it is the standing usage of France, perhaps too of other nations in all wars, to lodge blank commissions with all their foreign consuls, to be given to every vessel of their nation, merchant or armed; without which a merchant vessel would be punished as a pirate, were she to take the smallest thing of the enemy that should fall in her way. Indeed, the place of the delivery of a commission is immaterial. As it may be sent by letter to any one, so it may be delivered by hand to him any where. The place of signature by the Sovereign is the material thing. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... sound business and stability in the markets, had his hours of nostalgia for the lively times when the Street had trembled at his name. It was, said one of them, as if Blackbeard had settled down as a decent merchant in Bristol on the spoils of the Main. Now and then the pirate would glare suddenly out, the knife in his teeth and the sulphur matches sputtering in his hat-band. During such spasms of reversion to type a score of tempestuous raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... been. Kings, Kaisers, Popes, The stern Crusader and the pirate Dane, Each, centered in his own ambitious hopes, But helped the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... these last few hours on European soil to ease and slumber; they began to sing military songs, to drink to each other with their flasks filled to the brim with the rich wine of Xeres, toasting to the long life of the mighty Emperor Charles V., who was now besieging the pirate-nest Tunis, and to whose assistance they were about to sail. The merry soldiers were not all of one race. Only two companies consisted of Spaniards; the third was formed of pure Germans, and now and then among the various fellow-combatants the ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque

... herself that, if Mr. Wilkeson were only a pirate, a smuggler, a guerilla chieftain, or a dashing fellow in some unlawful, dangerous business, a few years younger, he would be ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... pinions, watching with the air of unconcerned spectators the methodical toil of the plodding gannets. But the instant that one of the latter rose from a successful plunge, with a plump captive writhing in his grasp, all appearance of indifference would vanish, and some dark-plumaged pirate of the lagoon, pouncing down like lightning upon his unwarlike neighbour, would ruthlessly despoil him of his hard-earned prize. One of these piratical gentry suffered before our eyes a fate worthy of his rapacity. A gannet had seized upon a fish much larger than his strength enabled ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... group except Max turned his face toward Adam Ward, who stood some distance away, and a very different tone marked the voice of Bill Connley as he said, "Now what d'ye think brings that danged old pirate here to ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... his task by a swift and crushing blow against the pirate cities and fleets, which broke up the organisation. He crushed Mithridates in one campaign, and received the submission of Tigranes; Mithridates soon after fell by his own hand, the victim of an insurrection. Anarchy in Syria warranted Pompeius ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... underground cave, and the next day, when Wendy got well, they all went down into the cave and Wendy agreed to be their mother and Peter their father. They had many good times together. They also had some exciting adventures with the red-skins and with a pirate named Captain Hook and his crew. After a time the redskins became their friends, and Peter rescued his family ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... longing to die have I cast myself into the deepest abysses of the sea, but death, alas! I could not find! Against the reefs where ships find dreadful burial I have driven my ship, but it found no grave! Inciting him to rage, I have defied the pirate—I hoped to meet with death in fierce battle. 'Here,' I have cried, 'show your prowess! Full of treasure are ship and boat! But the wild son of the sea trembling hoisted the sign of the cross and fled. Nowhere a grave! Never to die! Such is the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... time when they wouldn't grab at bait," the other replied. "You know they're built on the order of a pirate, and that's what a pickerel or a pike is, a regular buccaneer. Why, I've been out on the ice on a big lake in winter where dozens of little cabins and tents had been built, each sheltering a pickerel fisherman, ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie

... Spanish navy was scattered, and hardly gathered together until they came within sight of England the nineteenth day of July. Upon which day, the lord admiral was certified by Fleming, (who had been a pirate) that the Spanish fleet was entered into the English sea, which the mariners call the Channel, and was descried near to the Lizard. The lord admiral brought forth the English fleet into the sea, but not without great difficulty, by the skill, labour, and alacrity ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... than she anticipated, for she found that "El Diablo Cojuelo" had left his stronghold. Failing to make herself understood, Dolores fetched an old man who looked like a comic opera pirate and who could speak ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage

... with treachery, some few who had swum off to a point of rock in the sea, were lured back to destruction under a second series of promises, violated almost at the very instant when uttered. A larger or more damnable murder does not stain the memory of any brigand, buccaneer, or pirate; nor has any army, Huns, Vandals, or Mogul Tartars, ever polluted itself by so base a perfidy; for, in this memorable tragedy, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... a big book in the Captain's chest—Life and Death on the Ocean—quarto-sized and printed in agate. It was filled with mutiny, murder, storm, open-boat cannibalism and agonies of thirst, handspike and cutlass inhumanities. No shark, pirate nor man-killing whale had been missed; no ghastly wreck, derelict nor horrifying phantom of the sea had escaped the nameless, furious compiler. For four days and nights, Andrew glared consumingly into this terrible book, and ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... acquaintance, Mr. Porey, is in poore case, and in prison at the Terceras, whither he was driven by contrary winds, from the north coast of Virginia, where he had been upon some discovery, and upon his arrival he was arraigned and in danger of being hanged for a pirate." "He died about 1635." For further particulars from contemporary authorities, see Neill's History of the Virginia Company of ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various

... another pirate of the pit who had brought disaster to the bulls—no other than that old fox, Felix Page, himself a manipulator of successful big deals, and feared perhaps more than any other figure ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk

... beggar, who, being short of legs, rowed up and down the canal in a boat, and overhauled Charity in the gondolas. He was a singular compromise, in his vocation and his equipment, between the mendicant and corsair: I fear he would not have hesitated to assume the pirate altogether in lonelier waters; and had I been a heavily laden oyster-boat returning by night through some remote and dark canal, I would have steered clear of that truculent-looking craft, of which the crew must have fought ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... to himself, "whether that pirate is going to blow me up without warning, or whether that wireless operator of mine has gone to bed? I'll ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake

... promise not to be offended, if I tell you of a little mistake we made. We heared a sight of talk about some pirate craft as hoisteth his Majesty's flag upon their villainy. And when first you come up, in the dusk ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... was the Wandering Jew, though his long residence at the island militated a little with the idea: however, that was balanced by his marked reverence for the New Testament, and frequent references to the coming of the Son of Man; while others insisted he was a pirate, who had buried treasure on the lonely island, and there watched over its security. This last opinion was received with especial favor by the gaping vulgar, and further confirmed by the fact that the Solitary never asked alms or was destitute of money, of which, indeed, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... a grammar is not always an accurate test of its merits. The goddess of the plenteous horn stands blindfold yet upon the floating prow; and, under her capricious favour, any pirate-craft, ill stowed with plunder, may sometimes speed as well, as barges richly laden from the golden mines of science. Far more are now afloat, and more are stranded on dry shelves, than can be here reported. But what this work contains, is candidly ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... ten or twelve years before, in London, and on a week-day had helped to move the Floating Chapel round the Battery, from the North River; and that was the only time he had seen it. For his books, he said he did not know what I meant by good books; but if I wanted the Newgate Calendar, and Pirate's Own, he ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... the prospects for fruit in our orchards were never finer. You will remember how you prowled in them when you were a little boy, Harry, and what a pirate you were among the apples and peaches and pears and good things that grew on tree and bush and briar in that beautiful old commonwealth of ours. I often upbraided you then, but I should like to see you now, far out on a bough as of old, reaching for a big yellow ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... brisk, and an occasional cigar. May, Lulu, and Bertha would have translated it thus: "our old ginghams and our own way;" while Dinah, if asked, would have defined "comfort" as having the kitchen "clar'd up" after a successful bake, and being free to sit down, darn stockings, and read the "Illustrated Pirate's Manual," a newspaper she much affected on account of the blood-thirstiness of its pictures. None of these various explanations of the word mean the same thing, you see. And the drollest part is that no one can ever be made "comfortable" in any way but his own: ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... a Frenchman, or even a pirate, and if so we must give the alarm to other peaceful craft ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... poetize on the subject I would call them the butterflies of the human kind, remarkable only for the idle variety of their ordinary glare, sillily straying from one blossoming weed to another, without a meaning or an aim, the idiot prey of every pirate of the skies who thinks them worth his while as he wings his way by them, and speedily by wintry time swept to that oblivion whence they might as well never have appeared. Amid this crowd of nothings ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... excitedly: "because one day they went out and attacked a ship so as to plunder her, and found out all at once that it was a man-o'-war; and as soon as the man-o'-war's captain found out that they were pirates he had all the guns double-shotted, and gave the order to fire a broadside, and sank the pirate." ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... and the first written laws had their beginnings. Men specialised for fighting and rule as soldiers and knights. Later, as ships grew seaworthy, the Mediterranean which had been a barrier became a highway, and at last out of a tangle of pirate polities came the great struggle of Carthage and Rome. The history of Europe is the history of the victory and breaking up of the Roman Empire. Every ascendant monarch in Europe up to the last, aped Caesar and called himself ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... both sides, I addressed the governor to the following effect: Understanding from my people whom I had sent ashore, that they considered me as a pirate, having no commission, I had come myself to satisfy them to the contrary, having brought my commission, to make manifest that I had a regular commission under the great seal of the king, my master. This I shewed to them, reading the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... Fitful Head, "The Reimkennar." Her real name was, Ulla Troil, but after her seduction by Basil Mertoun (Vaughan), and the birth of a son named Clement Cleveland (the future pirate), she changed her name. Towards the end of the novel, Norna gradually recovered her senses. She was the aunt of Minna and Brenda Troil.—Sir W. Scott, The Pirate (time, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... his name had ever again reached his country, it would have been in some sad list of ruffians, murderers, traitors to their country; and even these titles, as if not enough in themselves, aggravated by the name of pirate, which at once includes them all, and surpasses them all. These were perils sufficiently distressing at any rate; but last of all came others even more appalling—the perils of moral contamination, in that excess which might be looked ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... no longer. He said coolly, "If you had brains in your head instead of high vacuum, you'd know that Planeteers never surrender. Blast away, you filthy space pirate!" ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin

... has been a pirate, a buffalo-hunter, a soldier, a pastrycook, and a seller of bootlaces, collar-studs, and tie-clips in the London gutters, sits paralysed in his grandfather chair, which has a thin pad strung to the back and a flattened cushion on the seat, and declares, vainly ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... perhaps, in the juvenile literature of England and English America, during the last century and a half, has been that of WILLIAM KIDD, the pirate. In the nursery legend, in story, and in song, the name of Kidd has stood forth as the boldest and bloodiest of buccaneers. The terror of the ocean when abroad, he returned from his successive voyages to line our coasts with silver and gold, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... for a broadside. But as the James swerved outward, a flare of fire and a loud report went up from her opponent's after part. For a moment it seemed that her cannon had been discharged at the pirate, but as they waited for the splash of the shot, a thick smoke grew in a cloud over the enemy's deck. The gun or a keg of powder had exploded. As soon as the buccaneers perceived it, they bellowed ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... of your delight Who purchase both their red and white, And, pirate-like, surprise your heart With ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... severe reckoning might not unnaturally seem small to one who had seen many old buccaneers living in comfort and credit at New York and Boston. Kidd soon threw off the character of a privateer, and became a pirate. He established friendly communications, and exchanged arms and ammunition, with the most notorious of those rovers whom his commission authorised him to destroy, and made war on those peaceful traders whom he was sent to defend. He began by robbing Mussulmans, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... remarkable by reason of its situation and surroundings, none the less than in its fabric, to warrant a deviation from well-worn roads in order to visit it. Chiefly of a late period, it possesses in the Tour de Hasting, named after the Danish pirate (though why seems obscure), which enfolds the north transept, a work of the best eleventh-century class. This should place the church, at once, within the scope of the designation of a "transition" ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... war. Service in the cause of the colonies could not be remunerative, and Jones knew it. A privateering command would have paid better than a regular commission, but Jones constantly refused such an appointment; and yet he has been called buccaneer and pirate by many who have written about him, including as recent writers as Rudyard Kipling, John Morley, and Theodore Roosevelt. Nor is it likely that a feeling of patriotism led Jones to serve the colonies against his native land. The reason lay in his ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood

... arms out of their own waters. The King accordingly detached one or two of his vessels under the command of Maxwell, his admiral, to inquire into these high-handed proceedings, with the result that one of the foreign fisher pirate-ships was seized and brought to Leith to answer for their misdoings. There they were reprimanded and bound over to better behaviour, then dismissed without further penalty. How little effectual, however, this treatment was, is exemplified by the fact that the selfsame ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... forts. But the official reports of Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane have already been published, and I need not, therefore, enter into further particulars. One incident is, perhaps, worthy of notice, as it shows the respect invariably paid by the British officers and seamen to a brave enemy, although a pirate. The colours from the pirates' fort had been twice shot away, when, to the surprise of the boat squadron, a native was seen to ascend, without regard to our fire, and nail the colours to the flagstaff. Instead of taking aim at him, he was enthusiastically ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... have always occupied it on The Laird's sufferance, so I do not think, Mr. Daney," she explained, with a faint smile, "that I shall turn pirate and ingrate now. If you will be good enough to bring me over twenty-five hundred dollars in cash to-day, I will give you a clearance for the loss of the Brutus and abandon the Sawdust Pile to you within the next three ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... listeners there was somewhat less inclination than before to act this part of the story. For one thing, the boys were righteously indignant at the idea of any true hero being in love—unless, indeed, he could carry off his bride from the deck of a pirate vessel, cutlass in hand, and noble words ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... It was indeed an era of piracy all over the world. The Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch traders of this period were almost always ready to turn an honest penny by seizing an unfortunate vessel under the pretence that it was a pirate. The whole coast of China, according to the accounts of Pinto, swarmed with both European and Asiatic craft, which were either traders or pirates, according to circumstances. Under this state of things, and with the pressure of lawlessness ...
— Japan • David Murray

... had all the gentleness and timidity of a girl, contrasting oddly with his swarthy skin, his hairy lips, his great hooked nose above a spreading moustache; in short, the head of an Algerine pirate before the conquest. These antitheses are frequent in Tarascon, where heads have too much character, Roman or Saracen, heads with the expression of models for a school of design, but quite out of place in bourgeois ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... scholar and a priest; I stood upon the sand; With lifted hand I looked upon them And sunk their vessels with my wizard eyes, And the stately lacquer-gate made safe again. Deep, deep below the bay, the sea-weed and the spray, Embalmed in amber every pirate lies, Embalmed in amber ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... this hour of their peril, and with the enemy at work in our own harbors, we begin to understand the difference between a good and bad citizen; the man that helps and the man that hinders; the man who, while the pirate is in sight, complains that our anchor is dragging in his mud, and the man who violates the proprieties, like our brave Portland brothers, when they jumped on board the first steamer they could reach, cut ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... space between which—about a foot and a half—is filled with bark, tanned. In a bend of the river, I saw the indications of something like the forming of a dock, or basin; and, on inquiry, was told it was the work of a Company who imagined they had discovered where the famous pirate Kidd had buried his treasure. The Company found to their cost, that it was they who were burying their treasure, instead of Captain Kidd who had buried his; so, having realized their mare's-nest, they gave it up. One of the most ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... of the storm-god's folk, Uncounted miles from the Fatherland, With a foe beneath every wisp of smoke, And a menace in every strip of strand. Up, glasses! Paul Jones was but one of these, Hull, Bainbridge, Decatur, their brothers, too! (Ha! those pirate nights In a ring of foes, When you douse your lights And drive home your blows!) Hats off to the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... era in our letters. He was one of the first to recognize the genius of Wordsworth and of Coleridge; under the influence of the latter he wrote the poem by which he is chiefly known, 'The Buccaneer.' He claimed for it a basis of truth; it is in fact a story out of 'The Pirate's Own Book,' with the element of the supernatural added to convey the moral lesson. His verse is contained in a slender volume. It lacks fluency and melody, but shows keen perception of Nature's beauty, especially in her sterner, more solemn moods, and sympathy with the human heart. Dana ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... foot has trod, And the pirate hosts that wander Shall never profane the sacred sod Of those beautiful Isles ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... prosperity, have we had? Since the first slave ship sailed up the James river with its human cargo and there, on the soil of the Old Dominion, it was sold to the highest bidder, we have had nothing but war. When that pirate captain landed on the shores of Africa and there kidnapped the first stalwart negro and fastened the first manacle, the struggle between that captain and that negro was the commencement of the terrible war in the midst of which we are today. Between the slave and the master there has ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... Muldoon hated the pirate prices of midtown parking lots, and so was late. It had taken him ten minutes to find parking space for the Plymouth. As he started to open the door of room 657 he heard the voice of one of the twins. The words or sounds were in a language completely foreign ...
— Lease to Doomsday • Lee Archer

... and probably a pirate, he thought no more of spitting a Christian on his dagger than I did of spitting on the ground," continued Schinner. "So that was how the land lay. The old wretch had millions, and was hideous with the loss of an ear ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... combat continued in the manner in which it was commenced, the result would have been a speedy and signal triumph in favour of the colony. But, by this time, the pirate admiral became convinced that he had gone the wrong way to work, and that he must have recourse to some management, in order to prevail against such stubborn foes. Neither of the vessels was anchored, but all kept under way, manoeuvring ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper



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