"Fastness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the margin of a small lake, and, it must be confessed, overlooking an extremely dreary tract of country." It was in the immediate neighbourhood of the wild country to the north, half forest, half bog, the wood and hill of Aharlo, or Arlo, as Spenser writes it, which was the refuge and the "great fastness" of the Desmond rebellion. It was amid such scenes, amid such occupations, in such society and companionship, that the poet of the Faery Queen accomplished as much of his work as was given him to do. In one of his later poems, he thus contrasts the peace of ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... The military telegraph, however, formed a connecting link with the War Department, so that Brant knew something of the terrible condition of the Northwest. He had thus learned of the consolidation of the hostile savages, incited by Sitting Bull, into the fastness of the Big Horn Range; he was aware that General Crook was already advancing northward from the Nebraska line; and he knew it was part of the plan of operation for Custer and the Seventh Cavalry to strike directly westward across the Dakota hills. Now he realized that he was to be a part ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... provincials and five hundred regulars. Crossing the Alleghany, he made his way in a north-westerly direction until Beaver Creek was reached, and then turned westward into the unbroken forest. The Indians of the Muskingum valley felt secure in their wilderness fastness. No white soldiers had ever penetrated to their country. To reach their villages dense woods had to be penetrated, treacherous marshes crossed, and numerous streams bridged or forded. But by the middle of October Bouquet had led his ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... to return to the bosom of the Church if only the cup (calix), and thus communion under both kinds (sub utraque), were guaranteed to them, with two or three secondary matters. Not so the Taborites, who drew their name from a mountain fastness which they fortified and called Mount Tabor. These, the Ultras, the democratic radical party, separating themselves off as early as 1419, had left Huss and his teaching very far behind. Ignoring the whole historical development of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... fine, and after stopping long enough to make a sketch of the house where I had passed the night, destined like all others in the open country to be burned in the course of the day, I pushed on to the fastness of Shawnik. The advance of the Turks was practically unopposed, for there was only a battalion of Montenegrins against thousands of irregulars and a strong division of regulars, and the Prince, never much troubled about the odds except where he was personally responsible, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... Count Severan in his fastness, Calendau "enters, awestruck, into the stupendous valley, deep, frowning, cold, saturnine, and fierce; the daylight darts into this enclosure an instant upon the viper and the lizard, then, behind the jagged peaks, it vanishes. The ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... John plucks up courage. The thought of Lady Ruth being miles away, mounted on a fast horse and speeding toward some desert fastness of the robbers, was one to almost paralyze his brain, for the chances of his doing anything to help her in such a case were ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... its overflow. The higher part of the level ground afforded a stance for an old house, of singular structure, with a terraced garden, and a cultivated field or two beside it. In former times, a Danish or Norwegian fastness had stood here, called the Black Fort, from the colour of a huge healthy hill, which, rising behind the building, appeared to be the boundary of the valley, and to afford the source of the brook. But the original structure had been long demolished, as, indeed, it probably only consisted of dry ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... had made her to be his mate. Suddenly a white cliff loomed up on the beach before them and from its depths came a tremendous knocking, as though some one were endeavouring to escape from a hopeless fastness ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... besiegers provided with food, means of shelter, or other conveniences, which might have enabled them to convert the siege into a blockade; and there would, at any rate, have been a risk of relief from some of the marauder's comrades. Hobbie grinded and gnashed his teeth, as, walking round the fastness, he could devise no means of making a forcible entry. At length he suddenly exclaimed, "And what for no do as our fathers did lang syne?—Put hand to the wark, lads. Let us cut up bushes and briers, pile them before the door and set fire to them, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Not he who flees his kind, Some mountain fastness, or some cave to find; But he who in the city's noisiest scene, Keeps calm ...
— New Thought Pastels • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... her fastness in Frank's attic, while Julius repaired to Raymond's room, and found him as usual lying tranquil, with his mother's chair so near that she could hand him the cool fruit or drink, or ring to summon other help. Their time together seemed to both a ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the water-front. The Chinamen were already busy in their shops. The sky had still the pallor of dawn, and there was a ghostly silence on the lagoon. Ten miles away the island of Murea, like some high fastness of the ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... as these dim shapes passed to the left there came again the sight of the expanse across which the disarmed men in red had been marching. And then the black ruins, and then again the beleaguered white fastness of the Council. It appeared no longer a ghostly pile, but glowing amber in the sunlight, for a cloud shadow had passed. About it the pigmy struggle still hung in suspense, but now the red defenders ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... fairly to boom out. At the sound of it, the hermit was galvanized into life. He dropped what he had been eating, and slowly rose from his crouching attitude. Then he turned slowly, so as to face the group of intruders on his island fastness. He seemed to fear they would vanish, if he moved too suddenly—vanish as ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... legions in hell cannot shake. Between you and me the battle has only begun, and nothing but your death or my victory will end it. You have your revenge; I intend to enjoy mine. Though he burrow as a mole, or skulk in some fastness of Alaska, I will track and seize that cowardly miscreant, and when the law receives its guilty victim, you shall be freed from suspicion, freed from prison, and most precious of all boons, you shall be freed forever from the vile contamination of his polluting touch. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... and beautiful widow, with an infant son, consents ("B to QB4"), and set about removing her child to a place of safety. She invokes the aid of Roqueblanc, an independent chieftain, who, spurred on by love for her, throws all his forces on to her side, offering at the same time his well-guarded fastness as a sanctuary for her boy. ("Castles.") Then the queen musters all her own troops and leads them into battle by the ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... fastness rude Three lovely forms I see, And marvel why, in that solitude, So fair a group ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... letter from Surinam, in the "Annual Register" for Sept. 5, 1772. Fortunately for the safety of the planters, Baron presumed too much upon his numbers, and injudiciously built a camp too near the seacoast, in a marshy fastness, from which he was finally ejected by twelve hundred Dutch troops, though the chief work was done, Stedman thinks, by the "black rangers" or liberated slaves. Checked by this defeat, he again drew back into the forests, resuming his ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... fastness of Protestantism was a place of more importance. Eighty years before, during the troubles caused by the last struggle of the houses of O'Neil and O'Donnel against the authority of James the First, the ancient city of Derry had been surprised ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... land plunges downward very rapidly toward the east into the valley of Jordan. The surface of Lake Galilee is already five hundred and thirty-five feet below that of the Mediterranean, and that of the Dead Sea is five hundred feet lower down.[341] Palestine is therefore a mountain fastness, and most of the waves of war swept by, leaving it untouched and unassailed. From Jerusalem to Jericho the distance is only thirteen miles, but the latter place is a thousand feet lower than the former, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Besides, it is all over and done with. What was good in our past moved me, and on that good I will take leave of you for a while. It's time to make an end of this long letter. I am going out for a breath here of the May air, in which spring is breaking through the dry fastness of winter with a sort of damp, keen ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of wild emotion Strike the ocean Of the poet's soul, erelong From each cave and rocky fastness, In its vastness, Floats some fragment of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... without the knowledge of the watch, went lightly on tiptoe to the house into which the bandits had gone to carouse. And when he had reached its hall, he sat down under the porch overhanging the door. Now the strength of their fastness made the warriors feel so safe that they were tempted to a debauch; for they thought that the swiftly rushing river made their garrison inaccessible, since it seemed impossible either to swim over or to cross in boats. For no part of the river ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Belgium, to look with tragic eyes at all that remained to him of his country. Here had come visiting Russian princes from the eastern field, the King of England, the Prince of Wales. No obscurities—except myself—had ever penetrated so far into the fastness of the ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... his chain, and a ring on his hand, which he loses no opportunity of displaying, is our friend Jones, with vulgarity as usual stamped on every feature, and displayed in every movement which he makes; the tall slim fellow, with an air of feeble fastness, an indecisive mouth, a habit of running his hand through his light-coloured hair, and a gaze which usually settles in fixed admiration on his faultless boots, can be no one but Howard Tracy; the third, a fellow with far more meaning and strength ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... lions, but if the lion hunts you it is not so fine." H. Clay Pate went to hunt the lion, and found the lion was hunting him. John Brown attacked Pate with an inferior force, dispersed his command, and took him prisoner, together with twenty-eight of his men, and kept them in an inaccessible fastness which he made his hiding place. A number of Pro-slavery men fled from the Territory, telling everywhere a blood-curdling story of hard and cruel treatment. The people of the State of Missouri were filled with rage and horror, and its presses groaned with frantic appeals to ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... shook his head. 'It was all kinds of fastness with me, I can assure you!' he said. He raised his hands in some excitement as he said this, and instantly rolled out of the saddle, and fell headlong into a ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... one of them but will cross himself and say his prayers when he hears in his mountain fastness the matin or the ave maria bells sounding from the valleys. They will often confess themselves to the village priests, to obtain absolution; and occasionally visit the village churches to pray at some favorite ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... time the Americans tried to break through, but were driven back with terrific loss. But the Germans could not approach close enough to wipe them out. Always when the Huns stormed there was such a withering fire from the American guns that the Kaiser's troops fled back to the fastness of ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... The old crone threw an epithet after her; but she flashed through the lighted doorway and was gone, followed by the oath and shouts from the approaching men. In the hut night fled with wild song and revel, and day dawned again. Out from some fastness of the wood crept Zora. She stopped and bathed in a pool, and combed her close-clung hair, then entered silently ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... down on the instant: not one being left to look to the bodies of the slain—neither to bury nor remove them. Like the battle-field, too, it becomes the haunt of wolves and other wild beasts; who find among the fallen trunks, if not food, a fastness securing them from the pursuit both of hound and hunter. Here in hollow log the black she-bear gives birth to her loutish cubs, training them to climb over the decaying trunks; here the lynx and red ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... believing that Jane could have found it advisable to deny her identity or that of the child; the only explanation that he could put upon the matter was that, after all, the white woman who had accompanied his son and the Swede into the jungle fastness of the interior had not been Jane ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... executioner, and in revenge for his many arboral murders the woodland had taken captive his mind, captured and chained it as Prospero did Ariel. The resounding footsteps of Progress driven on so mercilessly in this mad age could not reach his fastness. It did not concern him that men were thinking, investigating, inventing. His senses responded only to the sonorous music of the woods; a steadfast wind ringing metallic melody from the pine-tops contented him ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... drama overlooks the region where the city of Thebes afterwards came into being, yet, in the play itself, Thebes is never mentioned. The scene of action is the Cadmea, or Citadel of Cadmus, and we know that, in Aeschylus' lifetime, that citadel was no longer a mere fastness, but had so grown outwards and enlarged itself that a new name, Thebes, was applied to the collective city. (All this has been made abundantly clear by Dr. Verrall in his Introduction to the Seven against Thebes, to which every ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... hut,—a hopeless, uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to which the castaways still clung. Through the marvelously clear air the smoke of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled in that direction a final malediction. It was her last vituperative attempt, and perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain degree of sublimity. It did her good, she privately informed the Duchess. "Just you go out there and cuss, ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... she had to meet him with all that was catlike and subtle and devilish at the command of a woman. She had to win him, foil him, kill him—or go to her death. She was no girl to be dragged into the mountain fastness by a desperado and made a plaything. Her horror and terror had worked its way deep into the depths of her and uncovered powers never suspected, never before required in her scheme of life. She had ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... fumble in his pockets, and drawing out a brownish rag, possibly a handkerchief, knotted in several places, proceeded to untie one of the knots. The doctor watched him without speaking. Ultimately, from some fastness in the rag a half-sovereign was extracted, and was laid upon the table by Sweeny. The clerk, a well-dressed young gentleman, whose attitude had throughout been one of the extremest aloofness, made an entry in his book with ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... within the icy domes Of yon far Schreckhorn—ay, or higher, where, Veil'd since eternity, the Jungfrau soars, Still to the tyrant would I make my way; With twenty comrades minded like myself, I'd lay his fastness level with the earth! And if none follow me, and if you all, In terror for your homesteads and your herds, Bow in submission to the tyrant's yoke, Round me I'll call the herdsmen on the hills, And there beneath heaven's free and boundless ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... makers would offer for sale only three distinct coloring matters—iso or anthrapurpurine, and flavo-purpurine, leaving it to the dyers and printers to produce for themselves the intermediate shades by mixing the three colors; and he showed that by reason of the fastness of the shades produced by these coloring agents varying considerably, the blue shade (alizarine) being much faster then the orange shade (flavo-purpurine), consumers were in many instances losers by using ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... Travis knew now. The embroidery, Sons of the Blue Wolf, all fitted into a special pattern. But what a pattern! Scythian art, the ornament that the warriors of Genghis Khan bore so proudly. Tatars, Mongols—the barbarians who had swept from the fastness of the steppes to change the course of history, not only in Asia but across the plains of middle Europe. The men of the Emperor Khans who had ridden behind the yak-tailed standards of Genghis Khan, ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... and his companions had left their mountain fastness, as before described, they had appeared in different parts of the country and committed various depredations; some of their robberies having been accompanied with bloodshed and violence of a nature which so exasperated the people that an organised band ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... and lay, listening for snakes. But there seemed to be none there, though our rocky fastness was a very likely place. And after we had eaten and emptied our canteens, the two Oneidas went out on guard to the eastern limit of the rocks; and the Sagamore and I lay on our sides, facing each other in the dark. And for a while we lay there, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... say. As to his natural history, he lives with his mother in a tumbledown, unpainted wooden house in the deepest fastness of Willoughby Pastures. Lucy and I used to drive by it and wonder what kind of people inhabited that solitude. There were milk- cans scattered round the door-yard, and the Monday we were there a poverty-stricken wash flapped across ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... with her far-away look, emerged, you might say, in a dazed condition from hearing about the fastness of Thibet, where the Guru had been in commune with the Guides, whose wisdom he ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... interest, nodded again, partly to himself and partly to us, as if our appearance had confirmed some dark surmise of his own, took the water from Katrina's hand, grunted an acknowledgment, and retreated to his fastness in the study. He had not spoken one articulate word. Even Katrina, smiling her untroubled smile, seemed to feel that something in the situation demanded a ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... an icy wind had struck him, before her, she pulled the pricking vines loose from her dress, and came out. "How do you do, Lot?" she said, again. Still Lot did not answer, and after a minute she turned with impatient dignity as if to enter her fastness again; ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... formation of a colour lake, seems to be untenable. Then, again, the chemical composition and constitution of the dyes of this group are so varied that an explanation which would hold good for one might not do so for another. The relative fastness of the dyes against washing and soaping precludes the idea of a merely mechanical absorption of the dye by the fibre; on the other hand the great difference in the fastness to soaping and light between the same dyes on cotton ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... mind to follow the enemy into the defiles of Allatoona from Cartersville. His position at Kingston offered a far more easy way to turn that fastness by the south, if he could replenish his stores, rebuild the bridges behind him, and make Kingston the base for a march upon Dallas and thence on Marietta. On the 20th of May his orders were issued for the new movement, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... or at least in 1302? The reason is as plain as it is unlovely; nobody knew what to do with them. Political reasons counselled their effacement, their non-existence. Horrible thought, that the sunny world should be too small for three orphan children! In their Apulian fastness they remained—in chains. A royal rescript of 1295 orders that they be freed from their fetters. Thirty years in fetters! Their fate is unknown; the night of medievalism closes in upon them once more. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... further. What is the terminus? I do not care how fine a road you may put me on, I want to know where it comes out. My text declares it: "The redeemed of the Lord come to Zion." You know what Zion was. That was the King's palace. It was a mountain fastness. It was impregnable. And so heaven is the fastness of the universe. No howitzer has long enough range to shell those towers. Let all the batteries of earth and hell blaze away; they can not break in those gates. Gibraltar was taken, Sebastopol was taken, Babylon fell; but these walls ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... life for all of mortal beings that breathe and move. So lived the clansmen in cheer and revel a winsome life, till one began to fashion evils, that field of hell. Grendel this monster grim was called, march-riever {1e} mighty, in moorland living, in fen and fastness; fief of the giants the hapless wight a while had kept since the Creator his exile doomed. On kin of Cain was the killing avenged by sovran God for slaughtered Abel. Ill fared his feud, {1f} and far was he driven, for the slaughter's ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... there retired To his last fastness; overthrown by few. Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew. Then man to play ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... live under the same conditions if one is to feel the authentic thrill; the mere sojourner cannot know it. One wonders, in these feudal towns, what it would be like to leave democratic London or the independence of one's country fastness, and pass for a while beneath the spell of a Duke of Norfolk, or a Baron Leconfield—a spell possibly not consciously cast by them at all, but existing none the less, largely through the fostering care of the townspeople ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... expelled from their regions. Finding that all hope of carrying on the work in this neighbourhood was over, Livingstone turned his eyes northward, and commenced that series of explorations which absorbed the remainder of his life. Sechele retired to a mountain fastness, named ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... sheered off his morbid introspection. She made a difference. How strange for him to realize that! He felt grateful to her. He had been forced into outlawry; she had been stolen from her people and carried into captivity. They had met in the river fastness, he to instil hope into her despairing life, she to be the means, perhaps, of keeping him from sinking to the level of her captors. He became conscious of a strong and beating desire to see ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... fine-nerved. Woman is especially subject to it. A girl may put on her brother's boots, and they will not affect her spirit strongly; but as soon as she puts on her brother's hat, she gives him a manly nod. The same philosopher who fathers his dulness on me, asserts that the modern vice or fastness ('Trotting on the Epicene Border,' he has it) is bred by apparently harmless practices of this description. He offers to turn the current of a Republican's brain, by resting a coronet on his forehead ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... zigzagging between them. A frail little toy of man, it seemed, to venture here alone; small, black, impertinent atom forcing its way so hardily into this magnificence of colour, this silent splendour, this radiant stillness of the North. Into this very fastness of the most gigantic forces of Nature it had penetrated, and the sapphire sea supported it, the transparent light illumined it, the lance-like mountains looked down upon it, and the glistening bergs forbore to crush it, as ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... the major, "unless there is a storming party of ghosts to attack me in my fastness. I ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... head of 8,000 horse, and 80,000 foot, "chiefly Irish and Welsh." With this immense force he routed Wallace at Falkirk on the 22nd of July, and reduced him to his original rank of a guerilla chief, wandering with his bands of partizans from one fastness to another. The Scottish cause gained in Pope Boniface VII. a powerful advocate soon after, and the unsubdued districts continued to obey a Regency composed of the Bishop of St. Andrews, Robert Bruce, and John Comyn. These regents exercised their authority in the name of Baliol, carried on negotiations ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... is a relief," he said, waving a graceful hand in a neatly limited gesture, which everybody's eyes followed, his own included. "It is a relief and a retreat. The windows open, the blinds closed—that is as it should be. It is a retreat, a fastness, a bastion against the heat's assault. For me, a quiet room—a quiet room and a book, a volume in the hand, held lightly between the fingers. A volume of poems, lines metrical and cadenced; something by a sound Victorian. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... rounded; headlong she Falls to this cistern. And perchance above Doth yet appear the body of a ghost, Who here behind me winters. Him thou know'st, If thou but newly art arriv'd below. The years are many that have pass'd away, Since to this fastness Branca Doria came." "Now," answer'd I, "methinks thou mockest me, For Branca Doria never yet hath died, But doth all natural functions of a man, Eats, drinks, and sleeps, and putteth raiment on." He thus: "Not yet unto that upper foss By th' evil talons guarded, where the pitch Tenacious boils, had ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... of brigands in their mountain fastness, on the watch for plunder and rapine. The scenery in the background should resemble ragged rocks, made by fastening brown paper in a rumpled manner to a frame of wood, and shaded with light and dark-brown paints. This ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... Brian's castle in the hills, was told with primitive force and passion. But the most wonderful part of the story described how a strange dwarfed Little Man came out of the hills in the East, across the land, to the Western fastness of Black Brian, and there slew that evil man, because of an ancient feud—slew him in a situation of great indignity, and left him lying on the sands for the tide to wash him out to the deep and hungry sea. Even here Patsy had his inspiration from real life; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... civilization reigns, and claiming to suffice all; they are emigrating, they know not whither, if it be only towards the heights; there they are descending from their high, narrow, clerical, shut-in fastness. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... wholesome respect for our arms among the neighbouring nations, who, seeing that tribes so warlike and honoured among them have been broken to pieces without daring to fight a battle, even when posted in the celebrated fastness of Truckee, will form a just idea of the British power. Indeed, I have already received, within the last few days, letters from neighbouring tribes, asking me to attach their territory to Scinde, to be under the British rule, and thus ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to water. She was physically afraid of him, not because he had any power to move her, but because in sheer bullock-like strength he was too much for her, as in tenacity he had equally an advantage. As a skirmisher, or in guerrilla warfare, in which he might always retire to a hidden fastness, baffling pursuers by innumerable ruses and doublings, Jenny could hold her own. On the plain, in face of superior strength, she had not the solid force needed to resist strong will and clear issues. Alf looked steadily at her, his reddish cheeks more red, his obstinate mouth ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... remotest antiquity, of wild adventures and romance, of love, hate, death! What a revelation of harem, palace, treasury, of cavern, temple, throne! Of Hindu ghat, Egyptian pyramid, Persian garden, Afghan fastness, Chinese pagoda, Burmese minaret! Of enchanted moonlight, blazing sun, dim starlight! ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... civility had not redeemed her from the imputation of being "high," and Elvira was quite ready to call hers a very dull house. In truth, there was only moderate gaiety, and no fastness. The ruling interests were religious and political questions, as befitted Fordham's maiden session, the society was quietly high-bred, and intelligent, and there was much attention to health; for, strong as Sydney was, her mother would have dreaded ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... post by assault. Early on the morning of the 26th captain M'Cune reached the fort in safety. In the afternoon of that day, the enemy practised a well devised stratagem for the purpose of drawing general Clay and his troops from their fastness. On the Sandusky road, just before night, a heavy firing of rifles and muskets was heard: the Indian yell broke upon the ear, and the savages were seen attacking with great impetuosity a column of men, who were soon thrown into confusion; ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... dreadful tusks for the battle." Wilson was "the beautiful leopard," and Lockhart "the scorpion,"—names which were afterwards hurled back at them with interest. Walter Scott was described as "the great magician who dwelleth in the old fastness, hard by the river Jordan, which is by the Border." Mackenzie, Jameson, Leslie, Brewster, Tytler, Alison, M'Crie, Playfair, Lord Murray, the Duncans—in fact, all the leading men of Edinburgh were hit off in the ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... quite devoid of any life at the winter season, and he was amazed to find how many human beings burrowed in and hibernated during the storm-bound months. Elsewhere, the skulking traveler received a chary welcome, but in the silent fastness of the hills latchstring and hearthstone and tobacco store were for genial sharing. In almost any one of these log shelters that he chanced upon he might have settled himself in content and found an indefinite welcome, but the ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... climbed to their dark fastness, and of those who came none had ever shone with such blinding radiance of ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... am the God Thor, I am the War God, I am the Thunderer! Here in my Northland, My fastness and fortress, Reign ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Methuen tried by every rule he knew to draw the enemy; vainly, the Lancers rode recklessly to induce those human rock limpets to come out and cut them off. Cronje knew the mettle of our men, and an ironic laugh played round his iron mouth, and still he stayed within his native fastness; but Death sat ever at his elbow, for our gunners dropped the lyddite shells and the howling shrapnel all along his lines, until the trenches ran blood, and many of his guns were silenced. In the valley behind his outer line of hills his ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... tree was torn from the mass, which, mutilated and defaced on the one side, still spread on the other its ample and undiminished boughs. [A pair of chestnut trees, destroyed, the one entirely, and the other in part, by such a mischievous and wanton act of revenge, grew at Invergarry Castle, the fastness of Macdonald of Glengarry.] ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... abetting the resistance of Ismail Beg. On the 21st of August the General arrived at Ajmir, and took the town on the following day. He then sat down to form the regular siege of the citadel, called Taragarh (a fastness strong by nature, and strengthened still more by art, and situated on an eminence some 3,000 feet above sea-level). Bijai Singh, in Rajput fashion, was ready to try negotiation, and thought that he might succeed in practicing upon one whom he would naturally ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... whereupon the strong and unconquerable man in him choked back a sob of temper, and pulled the seat with a passionate determination. I tell you, such indomitable grit will always get its way, and the seat was well lodged against Mr. Pennybet's wall and beneath his green fastness, before the afternoon blushed into the lovers' hour. He returned into his garden, and, climbing up the wall by means of the mantling ivy, reached his chosen observation-post. Through curtains of greenery he watched the arrival of a pair of lovers, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... March, 1306, Bruce was crowned king. His enemies immediately attacked and defeated him, and he was obliged to take refuge in the mountains of the Highlands. Here he was hunted like a wild animal, and was obliged to flee from one fastness to another. One of the most malignant of his enemies was Lord Lorn, a kinsman of the Red Comyn. At one time Bruce and his few followers were retreating through a narrow pass, when he was set upon by Lorn and a much superior force. Sending his followers ahead, he stopped his ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... of safety.] Refuge — N. refuge, sanctuary, retreat, fastness; acropolis; keep, last resort; ward; prison &c 752; asylum, ark, home, refuge for the destitute; almshouse^; hiding place &c (ambush) 530; sanctum sanctorum &c (privacy) 893 [Lat.]. roadstead, anchorage; breakwater, mole, port, haven; harbor, harbor of refuge; seaport; pier, jetty, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... mystery for its own sake, and none were ever able quite to penetrate into the inner fastness of his personality. Those who came nearest to it were probably Hasfeldt and Ford, whose persistent good-humour was an armour against a reserve that chilled most men. Of all Borrow's friends it is probable that none understood him so well as Hasfeldt. He recognised ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... jungle. At the faintest sound of inquisitive footsteps he would retreat, hiding himself in some place, or, more frequently, in some manner, whither it was almost impossible to follow; and if, as sometimes happened, his pursuers pressed hard and sought to drive him out of his fastness, he would break out upon them in a way for which they were not prepared, and give them a shock which effectually forbade all further attempts. Such a result was unprofitable to Science and injurious to Snarley. For these reasons Mrs. Abel had come to a definite conclusion ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... slope, with gaze on the sweep and range and color of the mountain fastness that was her home. She followed an old trail which led to a bluff overlooking an arm of the valley. Once it had been a familiar lookout for her, but she had not visited the place of late. It was associated with serious hours of her life. Here seven years before, when she was twelve, she had ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... of "marvellous bigness" at St Michael's Mount, near Pontorson. This monster, who had come from Spain, had made his lair on the summit of the rocky island, whither he had carried off the Lady Helena, niece of Duke Hoel of Brittany. Many were the knights who surrounded the giant's fastness, but none might come at him, for when they attacked him he would sink their ships by hurling mighty boulders upon them, while those who succeeded in swimming to the island were slain by him ere they could get a proper footing. But Arthur, undismayed by what he ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... is it, when he praises golden curls, Or when, from anointed heads, the royal crowns away he hurls. Yes, methinks 'tis heavenly rapture, which delights the happy man Whom his words to Elba's fastness ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... demi-monde in dress leads to something in manner and feeling, not quite so pronounced, perhaps, but far too like to be honorable to herself or satisfactory to her friends. It leads to slang, bold talk, and fastness; to the love of pleasure and indifference to duty; to the desire of money before either love or happiness; to uselessness at home, dissatisfaction with the monotony of ordinary life, and horror of all useful work; in a word, to the worst forms of luxury and ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... must have cost if executed after the ordinary manner. The aqueduct was formally opened for traffic in 1805. "And thus," said Telford, "has been added a striking feature to the beautiful vale of Llangollen, where formerly was the fastness of Owen Glendower, but which, now cleared of its entangled woods, contains a useful line of intercourse between England and Ireland; and the water drawn from the once sacred Devon furnishes the means of distributing prosperity over the adjacent land ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... Laura found herself face to face with the strange inference that the evil of Selina's nature made her wish—since she had given herself to it—to bring her sister to her own colour by putting an appearance of 'fastness' upon her. The girl said to herself that she would have succeeded, in the cynical view of London; and to her troubled spirit the immense theatre had a myriad eyes, eyes that she knew, eyes that would know her, that would see her sitting ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... flight from a murderer who was hunting her to her death, while she slipped from one poor hiding place to another, sometimes crouching behind walls or bushes, sometimes lying flat in long grass, once wading waist-deep through a stream, and at last finding a miserable little fastness, where she hid shivering for hours, until her enemy gave up his search. One never felt the reality of such histories, but there was actually a sort of parallel in this. Mad and crude things were let loose, and the world of ordinary life seemed ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... dear uncle, with all their dash, and brusquerie, and fastness, they really are most kind-hearted ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... in weaving is abak fiber. The dyes are vegetable, their fastness depending upon the duration of the boiling. The Manbo woman, unlike the Mandya women, and women of most other tribes in Mindano, has never developed the art of inweaving ornamental figures. The best she can do is to produce warp ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... why the Barbary pirates took a full bag of luckless Riverains on every raid. You comprehend the raison d'etre of the fortified hill towns, and Eze, perched on her cliff, has a new meaning as you look down on Villefranche. This fastness was held by the Saracens long after the crescent yielded elsewhere to the cross—and then became a frequent refuge for the descendants of the victors in ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... of returning to their homes and friends—to spend the remainder of their lives in this wild fastness—was a thought almost as painful as the prospect ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... waited for reinforcements, and Washington improved the time to fall back to Northcastle, five miles, where, in the rocky fastness, he could defy the whole British army. To add to his advantages, the day on which the British commander decided upon an attack, after the arrival of reinforcements, a violent rain set in, and continued through the day, rendering an attack impossible, so that the Americans had still more time to ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... advanced nations of the East obtained communication with the Grecian continent and isles? What more probable than that the maritime and roving Phoenicians entered the seas of Greece, and were tempted by the plains, which promised abundance, and the mountains, which afforded a fastness? Possessed of a superior civilization to the hordes they found, they would meet rather with veneration than resistance, and thus a settlement would be obtained by an inconsiderable number, more in right of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... swiftly to black night that rushed past the two clinging figures and enveloped them in a wall of silence. Then out of the mysterious fastness came the dull glow of what looked like a distant planet. It grew and enlarged till it reached the size of a silver dollar. Little pin-points of light soon began to appear on all sides of it, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... evil diffused itself through the atmosphere. The air seemed lurid with the impending storm, for the situation was one of peculiar horror. The wealthiest city in Christendom lay at the mercy of the strongest fastness in the world; a castle which had been built to curb, not to protect, the town. It was now inhabited by a band of brigands, outlawed by government, strong in discipline, furious from penury, reckless by habit, desperate in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... This fastness was called La Roque de Tayac, because the village of Tayac faces it on the other side of the river. Although only a few fragments of the masonry that was formerly attached to the rock remain, the chambers cut in the solid limestone are strange testimony of the habits and contrivances ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... sobered robin, hunger-silent now, Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer; The squirrel, on the shingly shagbark's bough, Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear, Then drops his nut, and, with a chipping bound, 40 Whisks to his winding fastness underground; The clouds like swans drift ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... occupied uninterruptedly, like Cuzco and Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu would have retained its ancient name, but during the centuries when it was abandoned, its name was lost. Examination showed that it was essentially a fortified place, a remote fastness protected by natural bulwarks, of which man took advantage to create the most impregnable stronghold in the Andes. Our subsequent excavations and the clearing made in 1912, to be described in ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... it be day or night, overtook Bertram in the mountain fastness, and Atma knew once more that the human soul is lonely, which he had been fain to doubt or deny in the pleasant delusion of friendship. He lived alone, and, after a while, with returning mental health, he sometimes gave way to bitter reflection on these, his wasted days, though ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... deadlier his dream—a quenchless flame, For which no dungeon fastness can be built . . . You have but made the convict half divine, Crowned Truth with martyrdom, yourselves with shame; Not he, but you are branded deep with guilt; His cell is ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... that had placed him at enmity with her kinsfolk, yet he realized there was no help for this. The Morgans were a law unto themselves. Hardened men with a hardened code, they lived in their fastness like Ishmaelites. Counselled by their leader, old Duke Morgan, brains of the clan and influential enough to keep outside the penalties of the law themselves, their understanding with the outlaws of the Sinks was apparently complete, and the hospitality of one ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... men once more for the first time in two weeks since I settled down to do my worst or best by Peter, with my Grandmother Nelson's garden-book locked up in the preserve-closet down in the darkest corner of the cellar, and Sam lost in the fastness of The Briers. ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... mount, and then gallop through the camp, and this last it is quite impossible to do. Therefore the Assyrians, like all barbarians, throw up entrenchments round their position, and the mere fact of being inside a fastness leaves them, they consider, the choice of fighting at any moment they think fit. [28] So the two armies drew nearer and nearer, and when they were about four miles apart, the Assyrians proceeded to encamp in the manner described: their position ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... of the murderers, hoping to surprise them and recapture the women and children; but so much time had been wasted in delays, that Carson feared they would only find the mutilated bodies of the poor captives. In a few days after leaving Las Vegas, the retreat of the savages was discovered in the fastness of the mountains, where they had fortified themselves in such a manner that they could resist ten times the number of their pursuers. Carson, as soon as he saw them, without a second's hesitation, and ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... to be found. There is no doubt that human victims, and even young maidens, were offered to these snake-gods; even the sunny mythology of Greece retains horrible traces of such customs, which lingered in Arcadia, the mountain fastness of the old and conquered race. Similar cruelties existed among the Mexicans; and there are but too many traces of it throughout the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Cirta in Numidia at a time when the dusky chief there—one named Hazim Rhan—had made a haul of six malcontents who I understood had conspired against his authority. It seems that these rebels had a leader who had succeeded in escaping to his desert fastness, and whom Hazim Rhan greatly desired to capture. To gain this object he commanded the six prisoners to betray their leader; this they refused to do, whereupon the dusky prince ordered their ears to be cut off and threatened them that unless ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of this man. One thing was clear enough: the Lion of Petra was well informed. It was nothing less than fact that on no account could an expedition be undertaken against him for a long time. And it was fair, therefore, to presume that in his Petra fastness the robber chief would be feeling confident, and would be that much more ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... them—probably it was the Moon—that the scenery there was marvellously suited to their tastes, and would give them a chance to try experiments in landscape gardening according to Fairy ideas. It seemed likely that they might remain undiscovered in the new fastness for many centuries, and that when the time came for their presence to be suspected, the world would have assumed a new policy toward the Fay race. No cruel calumnies would be written or spoken about them, such ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... it. I, too, would be a trapper, and though the beaver and other fur-bearing animals were not nearly so numerous as they had been that day, sixty years gone, when Carson first beheld their mountain fastness, there still remained enough to make trapping interesting and profitable. Game tracks still abounded, and notwithstanding that I was a mere boy, inexperienced in woodcraft, I could distinguish that they differed, even though I could ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... readily visible inlet, cutting and grinding its cavity as it develops in size and strength, yet it is not safe. Fate follows in insignificant guise, drills a tiny hole through its shell, and the toilsomely excavated refuge becomes a sepulchre. Even in the fastness of the coral "that grim sergeant death is strict in his arrest." All is strife—war to the death. If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty among men, what quality shall avert destruction where insatiable cannibalism is the rule. There is but one creature that seems to make use ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... she was called, and, called again, she still stayed; and when, at last, Miss Fitch herself came out and stood beneath the tree, and in her pleasant, mild voice told her to come down, still the naughty girl, secure in her fastness, stayed. And when, at last, Miss Fitch, growing angry, spoke severely and ordered her to descend, Isabella shook the boughs, and sent a shower of hard little apples down on her kind teacher's head. That was dreadful, indeed, and dreadfully ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... her best and most efficient friend. As a reward for these services, she granted him a castle, situated in a romantic position on the eastern coast of Scotland. It was called the Castle of Dunbar. It was on a stormy promontory, overlooking the German Ocean: a very appropriate retreat and fastness for such a ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... determined. He startled her, for the altercation lasted two hours. On the other hand he had never said a word about the photograph of Jules Defourcambault, and had never seen it. Somewhere, in some mysterious fastness, the ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... brightness was afforded by our view of the Wartburg, which we passed during the only sunlit hour of this journey. The sight of this mountain fastness, which, from the Fulda side, is clearly visible for a long time, affected me deeply. A neighbouring ridge further on I at once christened the Horselberg, and as we drove through the valley, pictured to myself the scenery ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... at it, my dear," he told his spouse, in his fastness under a gnarled tree root. "However, there's no objection to the children having a look if it amuses them." He cast a discriminating eye round the larder, and frowned heavily. "Hell! you don't mean to say that we've got that damned ham bone again," he growled. "However, ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... inn, which went back farther from the street than the young man had supposed; indeed he perceived when they came to the great corridor at the end of which was his appointed chamber, that here was no ordinary inn, as it had appeared from outside, but that it penetrated into the fastness of some great family of former times which had fallen on evil days. The vast size of it, the noble design where the rats had spared the carving, what the moths had left of the tapestries, all testified to that; ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... conclusions for the most appropriate moment. Among any society there are many of this sort of people: some of them act upon their circle through sophistries; others through adamant, unalterable stead-fastness of convictions; a third group with a loud mouth; a fourth, through a malicious sneer; a fifth, simply by silence, which compels the supposition of profound thought behind it; a sixth, through a chattering, outward erudition; others still through a slashing sneer ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... silently retreat when the torture became too intense for the repression of society, and there alone, with closed doors, she wrestled with her agony. The stubborn independence of her nature took refuge in this final fastness; and she prayed only that she might go down to death with the full ability to steady herself all the way, needing the help of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... a dozen or more, still the wolves continued round the tree. It was in a dense part of the forest, through which the beams of the sun did not penetrate, or the creatures, disliking the bright light of day, would probably have retreated to their fastness. Hour after hour passed by, the air became unusually sultry and hot, even in the forest. Donald was growing, at the same time, very hungry, and though, as yet, he had rather enjoyed the adventure, he now began to feel seriously anxious about his safety. He had but a few bullets ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... the first two, I have collected singular although imperfect legends, which I hope soon to lay before the public in another place. Of Ahupu, except in snatches of song, little memory appears to linger. She dwelt at least about Tepari,—"the sea-cliffs,"—the eastern fastness of the isle; walked by paths known only to herself upon the mountains; was courted by dangerous suitors who came swimming from adjacent islands, and defended and rescued (as I gather) by the loyalty of native fish. My anxiety ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson |
