"Knee-deep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mere ripples here, began to slop in over her weather side. That, I knew, would never do, for if it did nothing worse it would at least interfere with the comfort of my passengers. Therefore, since I was already wet through to the skin, I nipped over the side into knee-deep water, put my shoulder under the boat's slanting bow, shoved her afloat again and, with the broken painter in my hand, waded along the margin of the bank, towing the boat after me, until presently I had worked her round to ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... three great scourges: the pest of horse-sickness and fly and the calamity of rain. For after twelve hours' rain in that black cotton soil never a wheel could move until a hot sun had dried the surface of the roads again. Roads, too, were mere bush tracks in the forest, knee-deep either in dust or ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... masks the winding of a mainland river. Isolated blotches indicate lonely lagoons and swamps where slim palms and lank tea-trees stand in crowded, whispering ranks knee-deep in dull brown water. The mist spreads. Black hilltops are as islands jutting out ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... amiss, But to be loved is more than this; And who more sought than I, By all that run or swim or crawl or fly? Sober shell-fish and frivolous gnats, Tawny-eyed water-rats; The poet with rippling rhymes so fluent, Boys with boats playing truant, Cattle wading knee-deep for water; And the flower-plucking parson's daughter. Down in my depths dwell creeping things Who rise from my bosom on rainbow wings, For—too swift for a school-boy's prize— Hither and thither above me dart the prismatic-hued dragon-flies. At my side the lover lingers, And with ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... atmosphere was oppressive, and pavements and railings in the city were warm to the touch from the steady blaze to which they had been subjected. At the Holbrook farm, however, occasional puffs of air stirred the silver poplars skirting the road, and waved the brown timothy grass that grew knee-deep up ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... which he waded to a deep, cool place under a shady bank. There he whacked his pollywog into small bits and tossed them into the water, where the chum speedily brought a shoal of little fish to feed. Quoskh meanwhile stood in the shadow, where he would not be noticed, knee-deep in water, his head drawn down into his shoulders, and a friendly leafy branch bending over him to screen him from prying eyes. As a fish swam up to his chum he would spear it like lightning; throw his head back and ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... Rains came, when no one could go into camp, and the Narkarra Road was washed away by the Kasun River, and in the cup-like pastures of Kashima the cattle waded knee-deep. The clouds dropped down from the ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... mine! Cursed be the cause whence Gotham's evils spring, Though that cursed cause be found in Gotham's king. Let War, with all his needy ruffian band, In pomp of horror stalk through Gotham's land Knee-deep in blood; let all her stately towers Sink in the dust; that court which now is ours 280 Become a den, where beasts may, if they can, A lodging find, nor fear rebuke from man; Where yellow harvests rise, be brambles found; Where vines now creep, let thistles ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... see this, but one of my associates did. He saw it last winter in a dismal place on the Toul sector. A file of our troops were finishing a long hike through rain and snow over roads knee-deep in half-thawed icy slush. Cold and wet and miserable they came tramping into a cheerless, half-empty town within sound and range of the German guns. They found a reception committee awaiting them there—in the person of two Salvation Army lassies and a Salvation ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... knee-deep in water, the men stood herded together like sheep in a pen. Their blankets were awash and floated about, tangling their legs in the miniature lake that could not find rapid enough exit through the doorway. They could only stand there ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... thousand roubles will not settle matters, and a hundred thousand is a castle in the air. Besides, when I have money—it may be from lack of habit, I don't know—I become extremely careless and idle; the sea seems only knee-deep to me then.... I ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... bank he stumbled and sank knee-deep, but threw me, as he would a sack, to shore, and the moment I felt myself on terra firma, I got up and ran off, and never looked back, trusting that my giant knew his own business; and so he did, and all dirt and bog water, was beside me again in a trice. "Did not I carry you over well, my lady? ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Albert, the principal work being the laying of cables and the improving of roads. On the 24th, quarters were changed to Henencourt and from billets into huts in the wood—most unpleasant, firstly on account of snow and frost, and then, following a thaw, on account of knee-deep mud. But a further change on the 29th to Dernancourt brought back billets ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... the least variation in the depth of the water so as to facilitate our exertions, but it was to no purpose. We were ultimately obliged to drag the boat over the flats; there were some of them a quarter of a mile in breadth, knee-deep in mud; but at length got her into deep water again. The turn of the channel was now before us, and we had a good run for about four or five miles. We had completed the bend, and the channel now stretched to the ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... stanchion-rail as he made his way knee-deep in water, came towards the two prisoners. It was Hans Koppe. He had obtained the Kapitan's permission to release his charges from their ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... stream silently flowing, so clear that you might count the pebbles on the bottom. The willows shaded it, and the grassy bank sloped down to the water's edge. I approached, I touched the water with my foot. I stepped in knee-deep, and not content with that, I laid my garments on the willows and went in. While I sported in the water, I heard an indistinct murmur coming up as out of the depths of the stream: and made haste to escape to the nearest bank. The ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Mrs. Blake's fireplace," he remarked with a friendly smile, as he glanced back at Lila standing knee-deep ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... were already knee-deep; and in some places immense fragments of rock, hurled upon the house-roofs, bore down along the streets masses of confused ruin, which yet more and more, with every hour, obstructed the way; and, as the day advanced, the motion of the earth was more ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... his boots, which where somewhere at the bottom; somebody else was searching wildly for a rope and axe, which proved to be nowhere; everybody was giving a different opinion on the best means of extricating ourselves, only uniting in one thing, namely, abuse of the driver, who stood knee-deep in mud, hitching up his trousers and muttering something about le detour. We women, meantime, tried to quiet the screaming children, and prevent the "unconsidered trifles" which filled the corners of the waggon from falling ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... on chill, unfathomable sorrow. He swam on, and heard at last the splash of the waves on the shore. His feet touched bottom. He slipped and slid among large slimy stones, worn incredibly smooth by their age-long washing in this sunless place. He struggled forward breast-deep, waist-deep, knee-deep, in the black water. He reached dry ground, crawled upwards till he felt the boulders no longer damp, and knew that he lay above the reach of the tide. He unbound the bundle from his head, clothed himself, and felt the blood steal warm through his limbs again. He staggered further ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... the less expensive mode of walking, entering a strange world. Sauntering along the Bowery she turns down Bayard street. Bayard street she finds lined with filthy looking houses, swarming with sickly, ragged, and besotted poor; the street is knee-deep with corrupting mire; carts are tilted here and there at intervals; the very air seems hurling its pestilence into your blood. Ghastly-eyed and squallid children, like ants in quest of food, creep and swarm over the ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... sea, and misty plain, Illumined slowly, doff their nightly shrouds, And Heaven's bright archer Morn begins to rain His golden arrows through the banded clouds, I rise and tramp away the jocund hours, Knee-deep in dewy grass, and beds of flowers; I race my eager greyhound on the hills, And climb with bounding feet the craggy steeps, Peak-lifted, gazing down the cloven deeps, Where mighty rivers shrink to threaded rills; The ramparts of the mountains loom around, Like splintery fragments of a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... miniature cliffs overhanging some portions of the brook's-course. Gray lichens and green mosses grew on these rocks, and belts of wild flag and sedges surrounded their base. The cows, in a warm day, used to stand knee-deep there, in shade ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... been adopted. These Indians lived in different villages several miles apart. The captives now found, much to their sorrow, that they were to be separated. Father Hennepin was adopted by the chief Aquipaguetin, and was conducted nearly three miles, often through marshes knee-deep with mud and water, till they came to a considerable stream, probably one of the upper tributaries of the St. Francis River. Here five wives of the chief, with their canoes, were obsequiously waiting the approach of their lord and master. A young son of the ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... it, and went on for a full week ere he came to them. And it was a man and his wife dancing about a tree, in the top of which was a Raccoon. They had, by their constant treading, worn a trench in the ground; indeed, they were in it up to their waists. [Footnote: To dance away the ground, or walk knee-deep in it, was characteristic of wizards. So was the hearing of any sound at an apparently incredible distance. To an Indian mind this tale is weird and wonderful from the first words thereof.] Then, being asked why they did this strange thing, they answered ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... have to be spent in the town before the little steamer would leave for Dyea. While Tim and Jeff stayed at the hotel, talking over old times and laying plans for the future, the boys strolled through the streets, which were knee-deep with mud. ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... Knee-deep, through clover, to the poplar grove, I waded, where my pets were wont to rove: And there I found the foolish mother hen Brooding her chickens underneath a tree, An easy prey for foxes. "Chick-a-dee," Quoth ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... dispossessed, in multitudes greater than any army that ever marched to conquest under Napoleon. When the history of America comes to be written in a hundred years, it will not be the record of a slaughter field with contending nations battling for the mastery, or generals wading to glory knee-deep in blood. It will be an account of the most wonderful race movement, the most wonderful experiment in democracy ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... expedition: he was expected back, and we longed to hear the news; Captain Penny having last been reported to have reached the water with a sound boat, a good crew, and a month's provisions. Landing at Cape Martyr, wet up to our necks with splashing through the pools of water, nowhere less than knee-deep, and often a mile in extent, we did not willingly leave the dry land again. On ascending a slope which gave us a view of the south shore of Cornwall's Island as far as Cape Hotham, and near a point known as that whence the dog-sledges in the winter used to strike off when communicating ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... knee-deep in a pool that had formed behind a sand bar, and he was having tremendously good luck. Even as Baree shrank back, his eyes popping at sight of this monster he had seen but once before, in the gloom of night, one of Wakayoo's ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... Elson. On the top of the ridge and on the slope where it descended to the marsh we found a few mossberries, which we ate while we rested. Crossing the marsh, we stepped from bog to bog when we could, but a large part of the time were knee-deep in the icy water and mud. Our feet at this time were wrapped in pieces of a camp blanket, tied to what remained of the moccasin uppers with pieces of our old trolling line. George and I were all but spent when we reached ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... a minute or two," pleaded the smith, who, with his assistant, was by this time standing nearly knee-deep ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... was full of troops, and regiments were camping out in the fields, where they had passed the night without tents. Many of the men had been so tired that they had thrown themselves down in the mud, which was almost knee-deep, and thus fallen asleep with their muskets by their sides. Bitter were the complaints of the commissariat. Bread and eau de vie were at a high premium. Many of the men had thrown away their knapsacks, with their loaves strapped to them, during ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... teeth, and bandying brutal and obscene jests back and forth. Then there was the huge bulk of the disabled ship, surging madly forward like a hunted creature dizzy and reeling with terror, her spacious decks knee-deep in the water which was incessantly pouring in over her bulwarks as she rolled gunwale-under; and for a background the mountainous seas careering swiftly past, with their lofty crests towering high and menacingly all round the ship, and the ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... ship; all is hurry, bustle, and apparently hopeless confusion. Bags and hammocks lie about just where they ought not to lie; ditty boxes are piled anywhere, and threatening instant downfall; whilst one has to wade knee-deep through a whole sea of hats to reach a ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... constitutes Dymchurch. He could see the little crowd of people he had so abruptly left. Grubb, in the white wrapper of a Desert Dervish, was running along the edge of the sea. Mr. Butteridge was knee-deep in the water, bawling immensely. The lady was sitting up with her floriferous hat in her lap, shockingly neglected. The beach, east and west, was dotted with little people—they seemed all heads and feet—looking up. And the balloon, released from the twenty-five stone or so of Mr. Butteridge ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... by the red hunter and warrior. Although hundreds of deer traveled to this lick yearly, they had not originally made the trail. It was an ancient Indian runaway, for the creek was fordable near this point. The tribesmen had used it for generations until it was worn almost knee-deep in the forest mould, but wide enough only to be traveled in single file. Along this ancient trail, and approaching the lick with infinite caution, came a boy of thirteen, bearing a ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... bird would sing, nor lamb would bleat, Nor any cloud would cross the vault, But day increased from heat to heat, On stony drought and steaming salt; Till now at noon she slept again, And seem'd knee-deep in mountain grass, And heard her native breezes pass, And runlets babbling down the glen. She breathed in sleep a lower moan, And murmuring, as at night and morn, She thought, "My spirit is here alone, Walks ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... hospitality, and a very pleasant acquaintance commenced on that day, which was destined to become earnest friendship. The next day was spent in putting the camp in order. As rain continued to fall, the mud in the company streets became knee-deep. Our sick, those unable to walk, had been left in our old hospital with a sufficient number of faithful nurses, under charge of the surgeon of one of the ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... Firedrake. Presently they sounded more like groans; and at last the Remora slipped up his legs above the knees, and fastened on his very heart of fire. Then the Firedrake stood groaning like a black bull, knee-deep in snow; and still the ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... nights of January a sudden frost seized the town in its icy grip, and, almost before we had time to realise the change of weather, pipes were frozen and hot-water bottles of strange design made their appearance in the upper corridors of the hotel. The naked cherubs in the park basins stood knee-deep in ice, skaters skimmed the smooth surface of the canal beyond the tapis vert, and in a twinkling Versailles became a town peopled by gnomes and brownies whose faces peeped ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... a skill born of agony, had found somewhere a solid verge and scrambled up, knee-deep, well out from the bank. With a splash, Rudolph stood beside him among the tufts of salad green. As he patted the trembling flanks, he heard a cry from ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... straight and wonderfully muscled; yet they differed as Ace might differ from a perfect specimen of another species. As they approached the mire, Ajor held forth her arms and cried, "Jor, my chief! My father!" and the elder of the two rushed in knee-deep to rescue her, and then the other came close and looked into my face, and his eyes went wide, and mine too, and I cried: "Bowen! For ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... roar swelled louder, and dismal shrieks and whistlings sounded in the ears. The Sea Queen sank, and a whole tide of sea rushed over the bulwarks and flooded the state-rooms. The water ran knee-deep and set the bodies of the dead awash. One struck against me in the whirlpool. It was a ghastly scene, set in that ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... Transport were at Vieille Chapelle. The field where the latter had their lines was nothing but a mass of mud, in most places knee-deep. The Transport at this time shewed remarkable activity, limbers going backwards and forwards all day to Lacouture on some mysterious duty, which was by no means unconnected with the excitement which arose in "A" Branch of Divisional Headquarters towards the end of our stay, about some ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... mind there is no high and glad human life. You may as well point to the savage drowsing in his tent, or to cattle knee-deep in clover, and bid me think them high, as to ask me to admire where I can behold neither intelligence nor love. All that we possess is qualified by what we are. Gold makes not the miser rich, nor its lack a true man poor; ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... there in the cutter, but worst of all, I realized that this incident, for the time being at least, had completely broken my nerve. As soon as I had brought the horses to a stop, I turned in the knee-deep snow of the field and made for ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... to shiver en shake, en say, "Oh, my! OH, my lan'!" en de win' blow de lantern out, en de snow en sleet blow in his face en mos' choke him, en he start a-plowin' knee-deep toward home mos' dead, he so sk'yerd—en pooty soon he hear de voice agin, en (pause) it 'us ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is the interest which men, even upright and honorable men, take in the aims they follow, that they believe it possible to wade knee-deep through mud, and then ascend to the temple of fame without dragging the mud with them, and befouling the ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... had heard of these Cornish horses, and how closely they were clipped; but these beat all I had ever imagined. I could see no hair on them; and I saw them quite close; for in the hurry each horse, as his turn came, was run out alongside the boat; the man who led him standing knee-deep until the kegs were slung across by the single girth. As soon as this was done, a slap on the rump sent the beast shoreward, and the man scrambled out after him. There was scarcely any talk, and no noise except that caused by the ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... was freezing cold, as the streams flowing into the river come from the mountains where snow and ice are found nearly the year around. As they stood knee-deep in the water and looked across to the other shore, they doubted whether they could swim the long distance. Here the Rhine is about seven hundred feet wide. Moreover, there are many whirlpools in the river and the current itself is very swift. The men besides were ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... Pau-Puk-Keewis; 40 Like an antelope he bounded, Till he came unto a streamlet In the middle of the forest, To a streamlet still and tranquil, That had overflowed its margin, 45 To a dam made by the beavers, To a pond of quiet water, Where knee-deep the trees were standing, Where the water-lilies floated, Where the rushes waved and whispered. 50 On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis, On the dam of trunks and branches, Through whose chinks the water spouted, O'er whose summit flowed the streamlet. From the bottom rose the beaver, 55 Looked with ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... thought that tribulation might chasten you in the eyes of the Lord. I've discussed it with our Minister, a poor body, but a courageous man. He told me I was unchristian. Now, what with all this universal massacre going on and my unregenerate longing, old woman as I am, to wade knee-deep in German blood, I don't know what ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... spring when first the arbutus comes up pink and delicate through the snow and later the fields begin to glimmer with the white of white violets, to flash with the purple of purple ones, and the children hang May baskets at your door; the summer when the fields are buried knee-deep under a white drift of daisies or sealed by the gold planes of buttercups, and the old lichened stone walls are smothered in blackberry vines; the autumn with the goldenrod and blue asters; the woods like conflagrations burning gold and ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... light their pipes and contentedly watch the children as they paddle about. There is the echo of mountain brooks in the gush of the water as it roars from the hydrant. With eyes tight closed one may conjure up the phantasma of green leaves waving and of meadows knee-deep with lush grasses and starred with ox-eyes. Such is Abingdon Square on a night in early August when first the ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... sea, the report ran, with houses and people. I was sent out to get at the truth of the thing. I started in the early twilight and got as far as Gravesend. The rest of the way I had to foot it through snow and slush knee-deep in the face of a blinding storm, and got to Sheepshead Bay dead beat, only to find that the ice and the tide had shut off all ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... archers—who wore no armour, and even took off their leathern coats to be more active—cut them to pieces, root and branch. Only three French horsemen got within the stakes, and those were instantly despatched. All this time the dense French army, being in armour, were sinking knee-deep into the mire; while the light English archers, half-naked, were as fresh and active as if they were ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... Canadian rushed with natural impetuosity into the arena, and was one of the most reckless and noisy debating-club spouters of the day. In speaking of the Reform Bill at a meeting at a tavern in London, he said, that, if the bill did not pass, he for one should like to "wade the streets of the capital knee-deep in blood." It was consoling to reflect, even at the time, that the atrocious aspiration was mitigated by the reflection that it would not require a deluge of gore to reach the knees of such a Zacchaeus as Roebuck. "Pretty wicious that for a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the safe haven of a Normandy fishing village; while we, accompanied it is true by your most fervent prayers, took our turn at mounting guard, on the fortifications during the bitter cold nights, or knee-deep in the mud of the trenches. However, I do not blame those who sought safety in flight; each person is free to do as he pleases; what I object to is your coming back and saying, "During seven or eight ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... therefore kept during the night. Somewhat to their surprise, however, it passed away quietly, and the next morning they resumed their march. They were passing the borders of a thick wood, nearly knee-deep in grass, when Roger felt his foot strike against a hard substance which emitted a hollow sound, as it gave way before him. Stooping down, he rose with a human skull in his hand, white and clean. He and Vaughan ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... your hand." It was a simple thing to do, that leaping on to the rock. All that was necessary was to jump out as the wave receded and left a great flat stone bare; but Max Blande look the wrong time, and stepped, as the wave returned, knee-deep among the slippery golden fucus, and, but for Kenneth's hand, he would have slipped and gone headlong into the deep water ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... memory still, a blistered dirty ship with patched sails and a battered mermaid to present Maud Mary, sounding and taking thought between high ranks of forest whose trees come out knee-deep at last in the water. There we go with a little breeze on our quarter, Mordet Island rounded and the quap, it might be within ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... useless lumber to a mind that has not throbbed in sympathy, scarce knowing why. It is just here that almost all teaching in both literature and its expression fails; there is not enough browsing—knee-deep, waist- deep,—for the pure ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... small; there were only twelve men and two women on board, and these two women were Gardiner's wife, Mary Wilemson, and her maid, Eliza Coles. The voyage was rough and stormy and lasted nearly three months and a half. When they arrived in Boston on November 28, the snow was knee-deep, and the winter set in so cold and forbidding that there was some delay in carrying out the plans for the new colony. As Lieutenant Gardiner was an "expert engineer," the people of Boston were glad to take advantage of his stay with them to employ ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... After the storm is fairly launched the winds not infrequently awake, and, seeing their opportunity, pipe the flakes a lively dance. I am speaking now of the typical, full-born midwinter storm that comes to us from the North or N. N. E., and that piles the landscape knee-deep with snow. Such a storm once came to us the last day of January,—the master-storm of the winter. Previous to that date, we had had but light snow. The spruces had been able to catch it all upon their arms, and keep a circle of bare ground beneath them where the birds ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... 200 seamen and volunteers were attached to each gun. Three of these were sixty-eight-pounder shell guns and three thirty-two-pounder solid-shot guns. Each of these guns weighed about three tons. Now each of these had to be dragged through the loose sand, almost knee-deep, for something like three miles before it could be put in the position the engineers had assigned to it. This battery, by the way, was protected by bags of sand piled on each other, and this was the first time that this device had been used. When the battery was in position the officers ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... nothing at all. You must see it glitter if you stooped and looked steadily into the hole. And on days when he came out and sate swelling his black sides, I never looked steadily; I would run a hundred yards round through the shrubs, deeper than knee-deep in the long wet grass and nettles, rather than go past him where he sate; being steadily of opinion, in the profundity of my natural history-learning, that if he took it into his toad's head to spit at me I should drop down dead in a moment, poisoned ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... who, in the boats below, stood facing the opposite bank of the river with their arms in their hands. It appears that the enemy had come down in great force to attack the boats from that side; and as the river was there very shallow, and the bottom hard, they could, by wading not more than knee-deep, have approached to within five or six yards of them; but in the first attack they had lost a great many men, and it is supposed that their repeated advances throughout the night were, more to recover their dead and wounded than to make any fresh attack on our compact little force, whose deadly ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... that, whereas towards the commencement of the storm it had been a rare occurrence for a wave to break over the ship, the decks were now continually knee-deep in water, and there was a constant splashing and crashing as the seas curled over the weather bulwark. Miggs had already observed it, and conferred gravely with his mate on ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the inclemency of the weather and the difficulty of finding fuel; the only vegetation which he could discover being fern and moss, which was so wet that it would not burn, while he was almost without fire, or any means of obtaining warmth, his men sinking knee-deep as they proceeded on shore in the soft slush and snow, which benumbed their limbs and dispirited them in the extreme. Through this country the unhappy remnant of the Franklin expedition, many years later, perished ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... pressure, due to the expansion of this large area of canvas to the gale, she lay down to it, until at every lee-roll the muzzles of the quarter-deck guns were buried in the boiling yeast that foamed and swirled giddily past to leeward, and sometimes surged in through the ports, filling the lee-scuppers knee-deep with water. And whereas we had before ridden buoyantly over the head seas, with nothing worse than an occasional shower of spray flying in over the weather cathead, the frigate now plunged her bows savagely right into the very heart of them, quivering ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... conclusion of the marriage ceremony and that a similar practice can be prove for the ancient Greeks.[54] At the present day the Jews of Tunis exhibit a Fish's tail on a cushion at their weddings.[55] In some parts of India the newly-wedded pair waded knee-deep into the water, and caught fish in a new garment. During the ceremony a Brahmin student, from the shore, asked solemnly, "What seest thou?" to which the answer was returned, "Sons and Cattle."[56] In all these cases ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... I had worshipped sat, not in statue, but in substance, along its radiating tables, or trod its noiseless floors. Half the literature of our language flows from thence. One may see at a glance grave naturalists knee-deep in ichthyological tomes, or buzzing over entomology; pale zealots copying Arabic characters, with the end to rebuild Bethlehem or the ruins of Mecca; biographers gloating over some rare original letter; periodical writers filching from ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... tempts An o'ergorged epicure to the last morsel That stuffs him to the throat-gates, is no more. If matter be not, but as sages say, Spirit is all, and all things visible Are one, the infinitely modified, Think, Jacob, what that pig is, and the mire Wherein he stands knee-deep! And there! the breeze Pleads with me, and has won thee to a smile That speaks conviction. O'er yon blossom'd field Of beans it came, and thoughts of ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... willow boughs, That build amid the glare a shadowy house, And with a Paradisal freshness brims Amid cool-rooted reeds with glossy blade; The antic water-fly above it skims, And cows stand shadow-like in the green shade, Or knee-deep ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... "France stands knee-deep in her own blood while the iron of Germany is being hurled into her breast. Iron Workers of America, to you has God given the answer to the German thunderbolt. The iron of the republic shall beat down ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... River at the fording of the Old Trail is not more than knee-deep at an ordinary stage of water, and its bottom is well paved with rounded pebbles of ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... aside the guns and the guide's game-sack, and formed a chair with their hands, and, bearing the girl between them, they waded out along the driven alder stakes, knee-deep ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... mocked his song; even the Swallows had returned from the warm, sunny South, and were for ever skimming over the brook, just dipping their wings into its limpid waves, then off again with the joyous 'Twit, twit, twit.' The meadows, too, were yellow with buttercups, in which the cows waded knee-deep. Talk of the Field of the Cloth of Gold! Francis the First would have been a clever man could he have made such an one!—no earthly king could create ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... desolate period, when the trenches were knee-deep in mud and when casualties mounted by reason of unusual activity on the part of the Huns. But the three friends and their comrades stuck grimly to the work. There were local attacks, and counter-attacks, and night raids, in all of which Ned, Bob and ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... a folding pocket camera with him and had already taken several rolls of pictures. None of the films had been developed, so he could not as yet tell how the snapshots would turn out. Now he took a picture of Dave knee-deep in snow, with the turnout and the others ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... the prisoner sat there that we heard about the raid. They clearly considered it something of a failure. They had to get through a ditch full of water to their necks, then some trip-wire, then a knee-deep entanglement, then a ditch full of rusty wire, then some "French" coils of barbed wire, then more wire knee-deep, with trip-wire after that. Moreover, the enemy's artillery fire was heavy. They simply went on over the parapet into the enemy's ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... all alive—mustering here, drilling there, galloping every where; and, moreover, Montreal is knee-deep in snow, and the thermometer below zero. Every hour brings fresh intelligence of the movements of the rebels, or patriots—the last term is doubtful, yet it may be correct. When they first opened the theatre at Botany Bay, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... morning the buffalo was heard groaning in the marsh, not far from the spot where he was supposed to have fallen. About forty men took their guns and knives, intent upon beefsteaks, and waded knee-deep in mud and water through the high grass of the morass in search. About one hour passed in this way, and, seeing the reckless manner in which the men were wandering about, I went down below to beat the drum to call them back, which the vakeel had been vainly attempting. ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... almost unremitting fury. At times it seemed more than rain—there were liquid shafts reaching from earth to sky. By noon of the second day, half the cellars in the village were flooded; coops floated in slatted wrecks over fields; the roads were knee-deep in certain places; the horses drew back—it was like fording a stream. People began to ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... broken by various little cascades and rapids, with here and there a longish reach of pebbly ground where the stream widened into a shallow rippling river with one or two small islands in it. At one of these places they crossed where it was only knee-deep in the centre, and finally stopped at the end of a reach, where a sudden narrowing of the banks produced a brawling rapid. Below this there was a deep pool caused ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... caravan, Knee-deep dust that once was man, Battle-trenches ghastly piled, Ocean-floors with white bones tiled, Crowded tomb and mounded sod, Dumbly crave that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... that Bud, Nort and Dick were enabled to maintain a footing, though they were knee-deep in water in an instant, and the one remaining lantern had to be held up to prevent it from being engulfed and extinguished ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... morning that I think I ever was abroad in; a chill that pierced into the marrow. The sky was bright and cloudless overhead, and the tops of the trees shone rosily in the sun. But where Silver stood with his lieutenant all was still in shadow, and they waded knee-deep in a low, white vapor that had crawled during the night out of the morass. The chill and the vapor taken together told a poor tale of the island. It was plainly a damp, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no speech would pretend, But he ne'er turn'd his back on his foe—or his friend, Said, toss down the whistle, the prize of the field, And, knee-deep in claret, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and so tough were they, that one might pull on them with his whole strength without tearing them. In the crevices and tiny ravines between the ledges, there were vast beds of damp moss. In crossing these we went knee-deep, and once waist-deep, into it. The only plant I saw was a trailing shrublet, sometimes seen on high mountains in New England, and known to botanists as Andromeda of the heathworts. It had pretty blue-purple flowers, and was ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... moment Ralph had a faint sense of enjoyment in looking out across the placid bosom of the Susquehanna, over into the tree-girt, garden-decked expanse of the valley of Wyoming. Off the nearer shore of a green-walled island in the river, a group of cattle stood knee-deep in the shaded water, a picture of perfect comfort ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... house there was a vast pile of building, comprising stables and coach-houses, barns and granaries, arranged in a quadrangle. The gate leading into this quadrangle was open, and Gilbert saw the cattle standing knee-deep in a straw-yard. ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... black howler monkey sitting motionless in a tree top. We also saw the swamp-deer, about the size of our blacktail. It is a real swamp animal, for we found it often in the papyrus-swamps, and out in the open marsh, knee-deep in the water, among the ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... impossible to keep them in sight. It was a hot and oppressive day; the air was filled with mosquitoes,—"so thick," says Champlain, "that we could hardly draw breath, and it was wonderful how cruelly they persecuted us,"—their route lay through swampy soil, where the water at places stood knee-deep; over fallen logs, wet and slimy, and under entangling vines; their heavy armor added to their discomfort; the air was close and heavy; altogether it was a progress fit to make one sicken of warfare in the wilderness. After ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... claim for the ballot suggests nothing more than a rough polling-booth where coarse, drunken men, elbowing each other, wade knee-deep in mud to drop a little piece of paper two inches long into a box—simply this and nothing more. The poet Wordsworth, showing the blank materialism of those who see only with their outward eyes, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the Gap after the Confederates was no easy task. The way was rough in some spots, and knee-deep with mud in others, and the forces went forward in the lightest marching order possible. It was out of the question to use one road alone, as each regiment that passed over it rendered it all the more torn up and difficult of travel, and troops were consequently ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... exchanged in low but excited voices between a young man of about one and twenty, and a lad who was apparently five years his junior, while they waded knee-deep in water among the long, rank grasses and circular pads of water-lilies which border the banks of Squaw Pond, a small lake in the forest ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... her communications sink in and take root. There was a deep hush on the landscape, as if in deference to her awful confidences. A deer stood knee-deep in the grass and gazed at them inquiringly. And as Mrs. Fazakerly stared unabashed into the face of Nature, Durant thought of Frida's remark, and wondered if ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... peculiar perfume blandly soft. At times we near'd the wild-duck and her brood In the far angle of some dim-seen pool, Silent and sable, underneath the boughs Of low hung willow; and, at times, the bleat Of a stray lamb would bid us raise our eyes To where it stood above us on the rock, Knee-deep amid the broom—a sportive elf. Enshrined in recollection—sleep those hours So brilliant and so beautiful—the scene So full of pastoral loveliness—the heart With pleasure overflowing—and the sky Pavilion'd over all, an arch of peace— God with his fair creation reconciled: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... the same time motioning to Mr. Stevens to that effect. By dint of great effort they made him understand what was required, and they then continued to make him jump in and out of the hogshead for several minutes; then, joining hands, they danced around him, whilst he stood knee-deep in the water, shivering, and making the most imploring motions to ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Sweet Prue, knee-deep in the cool green grass, Spreads wide her pinafore, The ripe fruit falls in a golden rain, By two, by three, by four; With watchful eye and ready hand She lets no apple fall— As fast as Rex can throw them down She catches ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the better of him the year before when he had risen in the gray dawn of an Indian day and stoically made his way to the banks of the Ganges. It had proclaimed itself above the Vedic hymns of the twice-born Brahmins, standing knee-deep in the sacred river; it had dogged his footsteps among the ash-smeared fakirs, and jewel-hung cows; it had even haunted the burning-ghat where he had stood and watched human bodies ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... one of those calm noonday scenes which impress upon us their own bright and voluptuous tranquillity. There stood the old herdsman leaning on his staff, and the quiet cattle knee-deep in the gliding waters. Never did stream more smooth and sheen than was at that hour the surface of the Moselle mirror the images of the pastoral life. Beyond, the darker shadows of the bridge and of the walls of Coblentz fell deep over the waves, checkered ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him. Helen, who had strolled a few yards away, was knee-deep in the golden brown bracken, picking some gorgeously coloured leaves from a solitary bramble bush. Lessingham had thrown his cap onto the ground, and his wind-tossed hair and the unusual colour in his cheeks were both, in their way, becoming. His loose but well-fitting ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gun by the stock, I sounded the water. It was a little under knee-deep. The noise it made, plunging down into the Pit, was deafening. Then, with a call to Pepper, I stepped out into the flood, using the gun as a staff. Instantly, the water boiled up over my knees, and nearly to the tops of my thighs, with the speed at which it was racing. For one short moment, I ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... to you to save me from my friends," I said, "if Tip Pulsifer goes digging gold and Nanny Pulsifer gets religion and old Mrs. Bolum belies her nature and forgets me. But anyway, if Captain and I sit here at night knee-deep in dust and cobwebs, at least we can swell our chests and talk about our brother in the ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... town looks as if it were a sort of general house-cleaning, and every thing was thrust out of doors and windows. And it was so pretty!" with a curious heat and passion. "It was like a dream, with its winding river and green fields, and men at their hay, and cows grazing in knee-deep pastures. Now all the milkmaids are herded in mills and factories; and the children,—well, there are no children ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... six the next morning, we had three hours of the same kind of walking, during which we crossed the river at least thirty or forty times, the water being generally knee-deep. This brought us to a place where the road left the stream, and here we stopped to breakfast. We then had a long walk over the mountain, by a tolerable path, which reached an elevation of about fifteen hundred feet above the sea. Here I noticed one of the smallest ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... melancholy song. And as we glide back, there comes to me the idea of the prodigious cost of that which we went forth to see, the magnificent horror of steel and steam and all the multiple enginery of death—paid for by those humble millions who toil for ever knee-deep in the slime of rice-fields, yet can never afford to eat their own rice! Far cheaper must be the food they live upon; and nevertheless, merely to protect the little that they own, such nightmares must be called into existence—monstrous creations of science mathematically ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... better look out for a cleaner place to land than this, for the mud seems to be about knee-deep," suggested Christy, as he tested the consistency of the ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... drank, devoured it.—Cattle knee-deep in green pasture, belly-deep in green water-flags by standing pools; cattle resting their long flanks while they chewed the cud; cattle whisking their tails amid the meadow-sweet, under hedges sprawled over with wild rose and honeysuckle.—White flocks in the lengthening shade of elms; ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... storming past stretches of gleaming bracken, all red and gold and stuck with spreading oak trees that stood sometimes alone, sometimes in groups of two or three together, and made you think of staring cattle standing knee-deep in ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... imagine we are a little above the junction of the Perry with this river. The bed of the Burdekin at this camp is about from 90 to 100 yards, and the strong-running stream is confined between bergues on the north side to a space of about twenty yards, and little better than knee-deep. Only a few small fish visible. Magnificent gums on its banks and plenty of excellent timber in every direction. This will be a most difficult part of the country for drays travelling on account of the many steep-sided creeks. At anything ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... insane light came into Phil Adams's eyes, as he stood knee-deep in the boiling surf, and for an instant I think he meditated plunging into the ocean after ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in many cases of a light loess, and some of red limestone rock, with a few li of paved roads. Many of the main roads over the loess are altered by the rains. Two days of heavy rain will produce in some places seas of mud, often knee-deep, and this will again dry up quite as rapidly with the next sunshine. They become undermined, and crumble away from the action of even a trickling stream, so as to become always unsafe and sometimes ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... inundated, often presenting leagues of water ranging in depth from a few inches to three of four feet. Cold winds blew, sometimes with spits of snow and dashes of sleet, while thin ice formed on the ponds and sluggish streams. By day progress meant wading ankle-deep, knee-deep, breast-deep, with an occasional spurt of swimming. By night the brave fellows had to sleep, if sleep they could, on the cold ground in soaked clothing under water-heavy blankets. They flung the leagues behind them, however, cheerfully stimulating one another by joke and challenge, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... went forth from our homes hundreds of thousands of men to do battle for their country. All the poetry of war soon vanished, and left them nothing but the terrible prose. They waded knee-deep in mud. They slept in snow-banks. They marched till their cut feet tracked the earth. They were swindled out of their honest rations, and lived on meat not fit for a dog. They had jaws all fractured, and eyes extinguished, and limbs shot away. Thousands of them cried for water as ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... the workshop, the banks and offices. In the munition works, in the shipyards, in the engineering shops, in the aeroplane sheds, they work in tens of thousands—risking life and health in some cases, but thinking little of it, compared with what their men are doing, knee-deep in snow and mud and water in the trenches. "Is the work heavy?" you ask. "Not so heavy as the soldiers'." "Are the hours long?" "Six days and nights in the trenches are longer." "We are going to win and you are going to help us"—and the munition girl and the land girl and the ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... night to keep out the dew, all the waxy chalices of the winter-greens pale and faint with passion, all the bells nodding to the wind, began ringing—ringing ten thousand golden bells; and the painter's brush, multicolored dazzling knee-deep in the Alpine meadows, flaunted countless torches of carmine flame to welcome back the day. Then, suddenly, it wasn't a sound of bells at all. It was her voice, her voice with the golden note and the liquid break that came when he had surprised Love in her eyes; and it wasn't the warmth ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... from the tree. Uncle Bart's son, Cephas (Patty's secret adorer), was a painter by trade, and kept his pots and cans and brushes in a little outhouse at the back, while Uncle Bart himself stood every day behind his long joiner's bench almost knee-deep in shavings. How the children loved to play with the white, satiny rings, making them into necklaces, hanging them to their ears and weaving them ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... brought up from below, or puddling and washing off "the dirt." Up come the buckets from the shafts, down which the diggers are working, and the dirty yellow water is poured down-hill to find its way to the creek as it best may. Unmade roads, or rather tracks, run in and out amongst the claims, knee-deep in mud; the ground being kept in a state of constant sloppiness by the perpetual washing for the gold. Perhaps there is a fight going on over the boundary-pegs of a claim which have been squashed by a heavy dray passing along, laden with ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... people are passing and repassing up and down, or sitting on every scrap of available building. They flow out over the steps and down into the water itself. They are standing there knee-deep, waist-deep, shoulder-deep, with hardly any clothes on their glistening brown and yellow bodies, diligently throwing the water over themselves, washing their long, straight, black hair in it, ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... monster, who with teeth is born, The mockery of art and nature's scorn; Who from the womb preposterously is hurled, And, with feet forward, thrust into the world, Shall, from the lower earth on which he stood, Wade, every step he mounts, knee-deep in blood. He shall to th' height of all his hopes aspire, And, clothed in state, his ugly shape admire; But, when he thinks himself most safe to stand, From foreign parts a native ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... progress, prompt. The brake- bands went on with a shriek and Jeremy and I pitched forward as the car brought up against the kerb in front of an enormous door, whose brass knocker shone like gold in the rays of our headlights. We told the Arab to wait for us and stepped knee-deep into a pool invisible, stumbled and nearly fell over a great stone set to bridge the flood between street and door, then proceeded to use the knocker importunately, thunderously, angrily, as men with wet feet and bruised toes likely will, whatever ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... again they passed cavities where the great shells had burst. But most of these were ancient marmite holes and the grass was again growing in them, or water stood slimy and knee-deep, and, on the edges of these pools, frogs ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... hall-door, was engaged in washing the dogs. The mother, who had been the first victim, was morosely licking herself, shuddering effectively, and coldly ignoring her oppressor's apologies. The daughter, trembling in every limb, was standing knee-deep in the bath; one paw, placed on its rim, was ready for flight if flight became practicable; her tail, rigid with anguish would have hummed like a violin-string if it were touched. Fanny, with her shirt-sleeves rolled up to her elbows, scrubbed in the soap. A clipped fuchsia hedge, the pride of ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... tree-fern, now a climbing fern; now some huge tree-trunk, whose name was only to be guessed at; now a fresh armadillo-burrow; now a parasol-ants' warren, which had to be avoided lest horse and man should sink in it knee-deep, and come out sorely bitten; now some glimpse of sea and forest far below; now we cut a water-vine, and had a long cool drink; now a great moth had to be hunted, if not caught; or a toucan or some other strange bird listened to; or an eagle watched as he soared high over the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... fires. The season is the beginning of January, and the country is covered with a sticky snow. The road itself is intermittently encumbered with heavy traffic, the surface being churned to a yellow mud that lies half knee-deep, and at the numerous holes in the track forming still ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Fusiliers at Range Post, where the road crosses to the foot of Waggon Hill. The stream of ambulance was incessant—covered mule-waggons, little ox-carts, green dhoolies carried by indomitable Hindoos, knee-deep in water, and indifferent to every kind of death. In the sixteen hours' fighting we have lost fourteen officers and 100 men killed, twenty-one officers and 220 men wounded. The victory is ours. Our men have done what they ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... sure that there were faint hearts among them when they felt the cold water and knew that there were miles of it to cross, here ankle- or knee-deep, there waist-deep. But they had known this when they started, and they were not the men to turn back. At Colonel Clark's cheery word of command they plunged in and began their ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... sinking, knee-deep and deeper. But his outstretched fingers managed to reach and ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it with clouds. In some parts the soil is heavy with water, in others it is only a thin stratum above the chalk; in fact, agricultural production could scarcely be said to exist there until fortunes made in India and in other foreign adventure enabled the owners of the land to pile it knee-deep with fertilizers from Peru and elsewhere. Thanks to accumulated wealth and the Gulf Stream, its turf is green and soft; figs, which will not mature with us north of the capes of Virginia, ripen in sheltered nooks in Oxford, and the large and unfrequent strawberry sometimes appears upon the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a swell in the hitherto calm surface of the water. A quick shot with the left-hand barrel produced no effect, as the movements of the animal were too rapid to allow a steady aim at the forehead; I accordingly took my trmisty little Fletcher* double rifle No. 24, and, running knee-deep into the water to obtain a close shot, I fired exactly between the eyes, near the crown of the head. At the report of the little Fletcher the hippo disappeared; the tiny waves raised by the commotion broke upon the sand, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... fire-swept zone be crossed in the shortest possible space of time by attacking troops. But if men are detained under the enemy's fire by the difficulty of emerging from a water-logged trench, and by the necessity of passing over ground knee-deep in holding mud and slush, such attacks become practically prohibitive owing ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... became more rugged as we wound our way among them. Farmers were loading hay in the meadows, through which streams glistened as they slipped over their sinuous stone- strewn bottoms. Groups of cattle stood knee-deep in the meadow brooks, or rested beneath the shade of elms and willows. In the center of the picture, disclosing its bends and reaches, Ausable river flowed on its way to Lake Champlain. In places ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... no more afraid of the weather than he was of anything else. Day after day he went out with his gun and his dog, to fight his way for miles through the drifts, up and down hill, over the open moor where the snow was not knee-deep, under the giant trees from which great lumps of it fell now and then upon his fur cap and grizzled hair, down into the dells and gorges where it was nearly up to his neck, and where his sturdy dog struggled wildly ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... moor a sea of shallow mist was rolling; and the trees in the valley, like browsing cattle, stood knee-deep in whiteness, with all the air above them wan from an innumerable rain as of moondust, falling into that white sea. Then the moon passed behind the lime-tree, so that a great lighted Chinese lantern seemed to hang blue-black from ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog. On such an afternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar ought to be—as here they are—mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On such an afternoon the various solicitors ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... fill the heart with pity. Oh, ye Rutowskis, Bruhls, though never so decorated by twelve tailors, what a sight ye are at the head of men! Dark night, wild raging weather, labyrinthic roads worn knee-deep. It is broad daylight, Wednesday, 13th, and only the vanguard is yet got across, trailing a couple of cannons; and splashes about, endeavoring to take rank there, in spite of wet and hunger; rain still pouring, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... knee-deep in the surf, and Du Mesne, clinging to the gunwale as he passed out, was soon waist deep, and time and again lost his footing in ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... pocket a drawing of black tea for his mother to sample, made his way through sheep-dotted pastures to Beechum's woods, and thence along the bank of the River Rood. Presently he spied a young man standing knee-deep in the stream in the ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... pictures. Some showed groups of stalwart, immaculately clad young gods lolling indolently on tropical shores, with a splendor of palms overhead, and a sparkling blue sea in the distance. Others depicted a group of white-clad men wading knee-deep in the surf as they laughingly landed a cutter on the sandy beach. There was a particularly fascinating one showing two barefooted young chaps on a wave-swept raft engaged in that delightfully perilous task known as signaling. Another showed the ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... First, as they shone almost motionless beneath the lucid waters—and then, fearless of the hard bent and rough roots of the heather, bore the almost alarming Fairy dancing away from the eyes of the stranger; till the courteous spirit that reigns over all the Highland wilds arrested her steps knee-deep in bloom, and bade her bow her auburn head, as, blushing, she faltered forth, in her sweet Gaelic accents, a welcome that thrilled like a blessing through the heart of the Sassenach, nearly benighted, and wearied sore with ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... quiet tilth and cote, Of little woods and streams, Of gentle skies and clouds afloat, And swift sun-gleams! A land where knee-deep cattle keep, Chewing as they stand; Of hillsides murmurous with sheep— ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... From ankle-deep to knee-deep, Andy stood helpless. Then, locating the door end of the vehicle, he drew back and massed all his muscle for a supreme effort. Shoulders first Andy posed, and then threw himself forward, battering-ram fashion. He ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... nags were brought to the door, and we, mounting, set out for London, where we arrived about ten, the roads being fairly passable save in the marshy parts about Shoreditch, where the mire was knee-deep; so to Gracious Street, and there leaving our nags at the Turk inn, we walked down to the Bridge stairs, and thence with a pair of oars to Greenwich. Here, after our tedious chilly voyage, we were not ill-pleased to see the inside of an inn once more, ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... had been one of the wildest luxuriance ever known in the valley of the Wabash; for it was in that beautiful valley that our friend Hobert had settled. The woods cast their leaves early, and the drifts lay rotting knee-deep in places. Then came the long, hot, soaking rains, with hotter sunshine between. Chills and fever prevailed, and half the people of the neighborhood were shivering and burning at once. It was a healthy region, everybody said, but the weather had been unusually trying; as soon as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... the rice farmers who wade through mud knee-deep to plant the rice by hand, cultivate it with primitive tools, and harvest it with sickles. And after all this, they must often sell the rice they grow, and themselves buy cheaper millet or poorer rice for their own food. The situation has probably improved somewhat ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe |
