gallopers

The guns were called gallopers because they were light and were usually hauled by horses, but now they were all harnessed to teams of ten oxen so they plodded rather than galloped.

Sharpe's Fortress Cornwell, Bernard 1999

Anyways, one day, Jack's out poaching rabbits in the wild woods when these knights ride up, all grand on their gallopers, armour gleaming in the sunlight.

Jack Scallywag Hal Duncan 2009

By afternoon the sun is full out – lighting the distant china clay landscape to the east and sparkling on the barley twist poles, mirrors, brightly painted horses and cockerels of the steam gallopers.

Country diary: Stithians, Cornwall 2011

Raglan kept sending gallopers down - Lew among them - to tell Lucan, and the infantry commanders, to get on with it, but they seemed maddeningly obtuse about his orders, and wanted to wait for our infantry to come up, and it was this delay that was fretting Raglan and sending Lew half-crazy.

The Sky Writer Geoff Barbanell 2010

They were in a great sweat at Raglan's post; word had come from Lucan's cavalry that our advanced posts were signalling enemy in sight to the eastward, and gallopers were being sent off in all directions, with Raglan dictating messages over his shoulder while he and Airey pored over their maps.

The Sky Writer Geoff Barbanell 2010

Fairground organs, powered by generators on gently simmering showmen's engines whose bright lights brought excitement to Victorian market towns at the end of the working day, reeled off their cheery tunes, while grandparents and grandchildren shared the pleasures of riding the wooden horses on the gallopers.

Country diary: Wensleydale 2010

Painters were both thrilled and dismayed that a horse in motion was so little like the images of rocking-horse gallopers they had been painting for ever, and the very idea of painterly accuracy began to disintegrate.

Eadweard Muybridge: Feet off the ground 2010

Raglan halted, cool as you like, glancing right and left, and then summoned two of the gallopers and sent them pounding away along the bank to find Evans and Brown, whose divisions were being smashed to pieces at the foot of the bluffs.

The Sky Writer Geoff Barbanell 2010

My front-gallopers swerved in among the jumble of fallen masonry and scorched timbers, howling like dervishes; I saw one of them sabring down a pandy who thrust up at him with musket and bayonet, while another rode slap into a big, white-dhotied fellow who was springing at him with a spear.

Fiancée 2010

I just kept my head down, praying feverishly, as is my wont, and then I saw one of the other gallopers, just ahead of me, go reeling out of his saddle with the blood spouting from his sleeve.

The Sky Writer Geoff Barbanell 2010