"Tattoo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... garb a shaggy fell, his choicest tool a flake of stone; His best of orn'aments tattoo'd skin and holes to hang his ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... up the student's lamp and sat down in the swivel chair before his desk. He sat uneasily, beating a tattoo on his knees with his fingers, and looked about him as if he were bored. He glanced at his watch, then absently took from his pocket a bunch of small keys, selected one and looked at it. A contemptuous smile, barely ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... time the welcome sound of gun-fire and tattoo announced that the day's work was over he felt fully prepared for the morrow's recitations. But he was in no mood for play. The quiet that had reigned through the building for the last two hours was suddenly broken in upon by sounds of mirth and jollity—merry boyish voices ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... that lumpy shadow which was the herd, traveling fast in dust that obscured the nearest stars. The shadow humped here and there as the cattle crowded forward at a shuffling half trot, the click—awash of their shambling feet treading close on one another. The rapping tattoo of wide-spread horns clashing against wide-spread horns filled him with a formless terror, so that he let go the seat to clutch at mother's dress. He was not afraid of cattle-they were as much a part of his world as were Ezra and the wagon and the camp-fires-but ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... tapped her foot in a noiseless tattoo upon the stool, and for a time looked off into space. She wanted to draw him out, to know from what depth this particular enthusiasm had sprung. She was accustomed to his exuberance of spirits, it was one of the many things she loved him for. If this new craze ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and formed the nucleus of Arthur's collection, at which Martin worked heart and soul, and introduced Arthur to Howlett the bird-fancier, and instructed him in the rudiments of the art of stuffing. In token of his gratitude, Arthur allowed Martin to tattoo a small anchor on one of his wrists; which decoration, however, he carefully concealed from Tom. Before the end of the half-year he had trained into a bold climber and good runner, and, as Martin had foretold, knew twice as much about trees, birds, flowers, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... there was a chill in the air that might betoken snow. Pamela Wolcott stood in the sitting-room window and sighed softly, as she gazed out at the November landscape, letting her fingers beat soft tattoo against ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... not sparing of its use. "He would walk out behind the convict-hoers in a morning gown and morocco slippers, with a Penang Lawyer hugged close under his right arm, or borne like a royal sceptre before him, plucking at every tuft as he paced about, and drumming such a tattoo upon the shoulders of the unlucky wight, whose ground was not completely chopped, and grass fairly uprooted, as made the whole brush dance ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... my vigilance having been rendered useless by a cursed captain, named M. Minutoli, who, when on guard, always shut the gate he had charge of an hour before the usual time. I was returning home with my two companions, and had got within half a league of the city, when I heard them beat the tattoo; I redouble my pace, I run with my utmost speed, I approach the bridge, see the soldiers already at their posts, I call out to them in a suffocated voice—it is too late; I am twenty paces from the guard, the first bridge is already drawn up, and I tremble to see those ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... green-bronze, maroon, or pure green; and when a camp-fire was lighted in a grove of such trees the evening effect was a thing to remember for a lifetime. The regimental camps were all alive with diversions of different sorts from the time of the halt at the end of a march till tattoo sounded. Each had its trained pet animals, and the soldiers exhausted their skill and patience in teaching these varied tricks. One regiment had a pair of bull-terrier dogs that played a game which never failed to amuse. At a signal one of the dogs would seize a firebrand by the unburnt ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... again." But it seemed no use knocking, and Wildney at last, in a fit of impatience, thumped a regular tattoo on the ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... came out of the darkness and at that instant I made a discovery. Leith was not alone. Keeping time with the clatter of the shoes was a softer tattoo that told me that a barefooted runner was racing beside the ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... about whom he professed to have such a tender interest. The hypocrite was looking and listening with all his might in the direction of George's apartments, striding about the room, upsetting the chairs, beating the tattoo, biting his nails, and showing other ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... states that "a sometime headman of Senendan had two square tattoo marks on his back. This was because he ran away in a fight, and showed his back to the enemy." This explanation seems to ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... disposed in small figures, and being placed upon the body, were, by a single blow of the hammer, made to leave their indelible impression. I observed a few the handles of which were mysteriously curved, as if intended to be introduced into the orifice of the ear, with a view perhaps of beating the tattoo upon the tympanum. Altogether the sight of these strange instruments recalled to mind that display of cruel-looking mother-of-pearl-handled things which one sees in their velvet-lined cases at the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... turned towards Florent and looked at him; then she looked at Gavard, who was beating a tattoo with his finger-tips on the marble table. She smiled at them, as though inviting ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... appearance of Sir Patrick and his companions in the room—was Geoffrey. The only change visible in him was a change in the handling of his walking-stick. Instead of tracing patterns on the carpet, it beat a tattoo. For the rest, there he sat with his heavy head on his breast and his brawny arms on his knees—weary of it by anticipation ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... mean—knew him. He was one of the sailor boys on Joby's van. You remember their helping us with the luggage at Indian Queens'? He showed me his tattoo ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hammer plays a perpetual tattoo to no purpose. The talking and the interruptions from all quarters go on with the utmost license. Everyone esteems himself as good as his neighbor, and puts in his oar, apparently as often for love of riot and confusion as for anything else.... The Speaker orders a member whom he ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... he did in the railway-carriage—the same strong-looking man with well-marked cheek-bones, very thick brown hair and bushy brows, a skin rather tanned, and a scar on the bridge of the nose; very strong hands with a tattoo-mark showing on the wrist and an abnormal crop of hair on the back, running on to the fingers, but flawed by a scar or two. Add to this the chief thing you would recollect him by, an Elizabethan beard, and you will have ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... the table on which the paper was symmetrically arranged in a stationery rack, and quickly seating herself, she laid her muff down, half-raised her little veil, and beat a tattoo with her tiny hand on the little black leather blotter before her, then taking off her gloves, she took at random some sheets of paper and some envelopes bearing the address of the establishment on the ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... profound courtesy, and, while her fingers beat a tattoo on the book she held, she watched him with a peculiar sparkle in her eyes, which he had already learned to understand was a beacon flame kindled by intense displeasure. Dr. Grey seated himself, and, taking off his hat, said gently and winningly, as he pushed aside the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... a ruptured mohair sofa; Dr. Petrelli, the lean, waspish chemist, was nervously trimming his fingernails with his teeth: and the M.D., Dr. Smathers, had a hangdog expression on his pudgy face and had begun drumming his fingers in a staccato tattoo on his round belly. ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the Greek's wrist, however, and he had to fight for another hold now—in the dark. Presently he captured it, twisted the arm in the terrible hammer-lock, and broke it; then, while the Greek lay writhing in agony, Mr. O'Leary leaped to his feet and commenced to play with his awful boots a devil's tattoo on that portion of his enemy's superstructure so frequently alluded to in pugilistic circles as "the slats." After five or six kicks, however, he paused, due to a difficulty in breathing; so he struck a match and ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... he beat a tattoo on the sides of the horse with his feet. But as Dick had on soft slippers, he did not hurt the White Rocking Horse in the least, nor did he chip off any paint. "Here I go! Here I go!" shouted Dick. "Oh, what ...
— The Story of a White Rocking Horse • Laura Lee Hope
... as she looked out on her shadowy garden, and tapped a little feverish tattoo with her finger on the window pane; and she meditated a great while, trying to bring back distinctly her recollection of Lady Constance, and also vaguely conjecturing who had arranged the marriage, and how it had ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... they call her—that nigh broke me. He didn' let me know till two nights afore he sailed. 'Beggars can't be choosers,' he said; and afterwards I found out from Peter Benny that he'd covered his poor body with tattoo marks—his body that I've a-washed hundreds o' times, and loved to feel his legs kickin' agen' me. Beautiful skin he had as a child; soft as satin the feel of it, and not a blemish anywhere. 'Tis hard to think of it ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had been beating a loud tattoo with the fork which she still held in her hand, sprang to her feet and struck the table with a force which set the ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... who live in tents, and are regarded with contempt even by the peasantry. Their women tell fortunes, tattoo, {189} and sell small-wares; the men work in iron (quincaillerie). They are all adroit thieves, and noted as such. The men may sometimes be seen going around the country with monkeys; in fact, they appear to be in all respects ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... for them to exchange a single word just then, owing to the riot of sound that came from beyond. The thunder bellowed, the wind roared, trees could be heard at intervals crashing to the ground, and the rain beat a terrible tattoo on ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... were all "raw"; and my duty, with others, consisted in "licking them into shape". It was drill, drill, from morning till night; and, by early tattoo, I was always glad to crawl into my tent and go to sleep—such sleep as a man can get among scorpions, lizards, and soldier-crabs; for the little islet seemed to have within its boundaries a specimen of every reptile that came ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... had a moment of consolation, because I met with something which seemed to me ideally perfect. It was a poor drummer beating the tattoo in the streets of Paris. I walked behind him in returning to the school on the evening of a holiday. His drum gave out the tattoo in such a way that, at that moment at least, however peevish I were, I could find no pretext for fault-finding. It was impossible to conceive more nerve ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... fragrance of wild honeysuckle and resiniferous trees; the jay-bird darted through the boughs like a phosphorous flame, screaming his joy to the skies; squirrels fled before us; quails beat a muffled tattoo in the brush-snakes slid out of the road in ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... east, is sometimes added. This is represented in No. 2. While others, as in No. 3, weave their own hair on pieces of hide into the form of buffalo horns; or, as in No. 4, make a single horn in front. The features given are frequently met with, but they are by no means universal. Many tattoo their bodies by inserting some black substance beneath the skin, which leaves an elevated cicatrix about half an inch long: these are made in the form of stars, and other figures of no ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... fragment of the brick chimney, where swallows build their nests from year to year. A wilderness of weeds, tall and luxuriant, springs up to hide the stone over which Jacob Cochrane stepped daily when he issued from his door; and the polished stick with which three-year-old Patty beats a tattoo may be a round from the very chair in which he sat, expounding the Bible according to his own vision. The thickets of sweet clover and red-tipped grasses, of waving ferns and young alder bushes hide all of ugliness that belongs to the deserted spot and serve as a miniature forest in whose ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... public crier had finished his tattoo he called forth in a jerky voice, pausing in ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... and knocked sharply. There was no response, and he repeated the summons, but again without effect. Thereupon, with a muttered exclamation, he grasped the knocker a third time and executed a veritable tattoo upon the door. When this had proceeded for about half a ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... music of that sighing rustle through the audience which bespeaks a profound impression. He could scarcely keep the fingers of his hands, covering his bowed face in a devotional posture as they were, from drumming a jubilant tattoo. His pulses did this in every vein, throbbing with excited exultation. The insistent whim seized him, as he still bent thus before his people, to whisper to his own heart, "At ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... the kitchen without another glance at her aunt or the delighted Mrs. Tony and dashed up the stairs to her own little room which looked out over the whole of Ramble Valley. It was warm with the March sunshine and the leafless boughs of the creeper that covered the end of the house were tapping a gay tattoo on the window panes to the music ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... influence of the imitation of one man by another in the evolution of civilisation. Imitation is one of the chief spurs to action. Imitation begets custom, custom begets sanctity. At first all custom is sacred. To the savage it is as much a religious duty to tattoo himself as to sacrifice to his gods. But certain customs naturally survive, because they are really useful; they actually have good effects, and so need no social sanction. Others are really useless; but man is too conservative and imitative to abandon them. These become ritual. Custom is ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... malheligo. Tarnish malheligi. Tarry malfrui. Tarry (to stay in a place) resti. Tart (pastry) torto. Tart acida. Task tasko. Taskwork tasklaboro. Tassel drappendajxo. Taste gustumi. Taste gusto. Tasty (palatable) bongusta. Tatter cxifonajxo. Tattle babilajxo, babilado. Tattoo tatui. Taunt sarkasmo. Taut strecxa. Tautology ripetado, tauxtologio. Tavern drinkejo. Taw felpreparadi. Tawdry falsluksa. Tawny dubeflava. Tax taksi. Tax takso, imposto. Tea teo. Tea canister teujo. Tea caddy teujo. Tea plant tearbeto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... him; her heat, feeling, not only astonished but worried him a little. She was standing there now beating a tattoo on the window pane. He wondered what she was thinking about. The experience as to Ann revealed Katie to him as having thought about things he would not have dreamed she was thinking about. What in the world did she mean by saying she'd like to be a deserter herself? ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... soon after, and I saw the boy go and join a tall, peculiar-looking savage, who was marked with tattoo lines or paint in a way different to the rest, and these two talked together for a long while, gesticulating and nodding again and again in my direction, as if I was the subject of ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... inwardly in ecstasies. So much so, that she could not wait to beat the tattoo and effect any alterations. But having succeeded, while conversing with her cousins, in devising a stanza in her mind, she promptly inscribed it on the first piece of paper that came to hand. "I have," she remarked, with a precursory smile, "stuck to the metre and written two stanzas. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a regular tattoo as he found himself actually compelled to pass under the tree itself, owing to the narrowness of the channel at just that part of the runway. Elmer, watching out of the tail of his eye, could see how pale the other had become, and he ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... answered by the slamming of the outside door, and by a voice in the entry; a moment later, there was a sharp tattoo on the library door. The colonel opened it ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... after him," suggested Jack, and, nothing loath, Mark assented. The two lads broke into a run, but, as they leaped forward, the man also increased his pace, and they could hear his feet pounding out a tattoo ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... Something struck me on the back of the head, partially stunning me and knocking me to the deck. My first thought was that something had carried away aloft; but even as I went down, and before I struck the deck, I heard the devil's own tattoo of rifles from the boats, and twisting sidewise, I caught a glimpse of the sailor who was standing guard. Two big niggers were holding his arms, and a third nigger from behind was braining him ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... benefit of their services in working their vessels along the Slave Coast. And in order to prevent any Kruboy being carried off as a slave by mistake, which would have prejudiced these useful allies, the slavers persuaded them always to tattoo a band of basket-work pattern down their foreheads and out on to the tip of their broad noses: this is the most extensive bit of real tattoo that I know of in West Africa, and the Kruboys still keep ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... privileges, such as receiving the fullest indulgence in the grant of passes, consistent with the requirements of health, duty, and discipline, and being excused attendance at all roll-calls (including meals), except perhaps at tattoo. I had often remarked that those corps in which indulgences were most freely given contained the largest number of well-behaved men, and I had been assured that such indulgences were seldom abused, and that, while they were greatly appreciated ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... Patagonia are Indians. They have red-brown skin, long black hair, and small eyes. The men are very tall. Some of them are seven feet high. They paint their faces red and black, and tattoo their arms. They do this with a needle. They put the needle into dye, and then prick the skin ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... the skin is punctured. Into these punctures a preparation made from the kernel of the candle-nut, mixed with cocoa-nut oil, is rubbed, and the mark thus made is indelible. The operation is performed by a class of men whose profession it is, and they tattoo as much at a time as the person on whom they are operating can bear; which is not much, the pain and inflammation caused by tattooing being very great, sometimes causing death. Some of the chiefs were tattooed with an ornamental ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... the habit of clumping through the morning in flat, heavy shoes, Miss Harrison's small heels beat a busy tattoo on the tiled floor. With the rustling of her starched dress, the sound was essentially feminine, almost insistent. When he had time to notice it, it amused him that he did not find ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... knew that I had just returned from the battle-fields, attempted to detain me by sheer force. I dashed rapidly up the plank walk, reached the portal, and had just vaulted into the area, when the great gates swung to, and the tattoo beat; at the same instant the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the pick-handles upon the backs, shoulders, sometimes heads of rioters. It was like a systematic tattoo. Coleman's voice was heard directing, here and there, cool and dispassionate. A couple of locomotive headlights threw their glare upon the now ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... our lads—and the pirates too, apparently—had been waiting for, for the next moment the guns of our port battery crashed forth, one after the other, while our port Maxim— the only one of the two that could be brought to bear—started its savage thud-thudding tattoo, and in less than half a minute the ship was enveloped in a cloud of acrid smoke which, hanging motionless in the stagnant air, effectually cloaked the approach of the attacking force, and as effectually prevented ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... he saw something that checked his futile anger. A tall shadow that had come up the path behind them stretched out an arm, and he heard the vilifier's words gurgle and die away, as one of the strong hands that had beat the tattoo of approbation clutched him by the throat. The boy would have rushed to the assistance of this executive friend if the girl had not clasped his arm ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... overcoming it, is an object of admiration for the gods, that Power in whose chapels the old major was a faithful worshiper must have looked upward approvingly upon the constancy of Pendennis's martyrdom. There are sufferers in that cause as in the other; the negroes in the service of Mumbo Jumbo tattoo and drill themselves with burning skewers with great fortitude; and we read that the priests in the service of Baal gashed themselves and bled freely. You who can smash the idols, do so with a good courage; but do not be ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Seas, and stabbed it with the knife in his right hand, just as the monster's teeth were closing on his other arm. And to make his story more vivid he bared his great shaggy arm, and showed us an ugly white scar among the tattoo marks above the elbow. Another man told us how he had stood beside Nelson on the "Victory," just as the admiral received his death-wound; and it never occurred to us to wonder how a man of not more than ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... this moment a splendid equipage drove up to the door, with powdered footmen and long canes behind, and then a terrible rap, like the tattoo of a field-marshal. ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... rainy night in November. The wind whistled about the house, the rain beat a tattoo against the window-panes and flooded the sills. The big base-burner, filled with anthracite coal, was illuminating the room through its mica windows, on all sides, and dispensing a warmth that smiled at the storm and cold outside. There ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... house-door is but a flimsy barricade against a mob, especially if that mob be led by five-and-twenty stout-bodied seaman. We had shut it merely to gain time, and when the cudgels outside began to play tattoo upon its upper panels I looked for no more than a minute's ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... in her chair and showed them a scornful shoulder, compressing indignant lips to a straight, unlovely line, and beating out the devil's tattoo with ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... the haunches. For small boys they delivered sturdy blows. Now, if there is anything that will make a burro move dexterously out of his tracks, it is to get behind him with a club and beat a steady tattoo on his hams and legs. No sooner did the boys begin to apply their clubs in good earnest than our burros began to print tracks in quick succession on the dusty road, and we went gayly through the town, the lads making a merry din with ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... said Lady Gorgon, cursing Mr. Scully in her heart, and beginning to play a rapid tattoo with her feet, "that miscreant, that traitor, that—that ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... forgotten at the last minute, and then proceeded to dress with haste. But, sure enough, at a quarter past eight, Ferren, true to his word, emerged immaculate from his bedroom, and commenced beating a tattoo on Kitty's door. ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... much to me as though it were one of those crimes of passion which are so frequent in this country," he said. "Mordon was a Frenchman and I have been able to identify him by tattoo marks on his arm, as a man who has been in the hands of the ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... finished their meal and drifted back to their various employments. The hammers began again their merry tattoo; and the wrangling voices of dice-throwers replaced the shouts of the bathers. Except for these, however, the place was still. The sun shone hotly, and the trees appeared to nap in the ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... boy," said BULMER to me, while he inserted his thumbs in the arm-openings of his waistcoats, and drummed an approving tattoo upon his shining shirt-front, "my dear boy, I have always been your friend, and nobody knows it better than you. Many a time have I proved it to you, and I can honestly assure you that nothing gives me greater pleasure than to welcome you in ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... just as a colt frisks to show how well he feels, he whirred yet more loudly, until, unwittingly, he found himself drumming, and tickled with the discovery of his new power, thumped the air again and again till he filled the near woods with the loud tattoo of the fully grown cock-partridge. His brother and sister heard and looked on with admiration and surprise; so did his mother, but from that time she began to be ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... said to tattoo and circumcise. They determine the days of rest and of ceremony for the pueblo, and all pueblo ceremonies are in their hands; so also are the ceremonies of the ato — only men are "priests," except for private ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... please. Privates, lieutenants, captains, colonels, generals, all are subject to the orders of their superior officers. All must obey the general in command. You march, drill, eat, sleep, go to bed, and get up by order. At sunrise you hear the reveille, and at nine o'clock in the evening the tattoo. Then the candle, which has been burning in your tent with a bayonet for a candlestick, must be put out. In the dead of night, while sleeping soundly and dreaming of home, you hear the drum-beat. It is the long roll. There ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... not shift his attitude, fingers curved to clutch, arms extended, until he heard the tattoo of their horses' hoofs on ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... silence, his face went ruminative and then sad. With a sudden indrawing of breath he freed himself from his reverie, and bending over from his saddle patted a buckskin neck in affectionate tattoo. Tawny ears turned backward in appreciative fellowship, but without any break in a plodding dog-trot. Though the rider's aspect might say with the desert that time was nothing, the pony's expressed a logical purpose. Thus the speed of their machine-like ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... first heard that he wished to see her, she thought her heart could beat no faster, but his words made that small organ tattoo against her sides like the flutter of a bird's wing in fright. She could do something for him! Oh, what joy! ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... relieved a moment later by the brute's own strange behaviour. Suddenly, without the slightest warning, Neche plumped down upon his hind-quarters. His pricked ears drooped, and his two fore paws began to beat a sort of tattoo upon the floor. Then followed a broken whine, tremulous and blandishing, and the great head moved from side to side with that curious movement which only dogs use to express their gladness. Then the strange, three-legged beast ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... the corridors. He took a step forward. Jim pushed him encouragingly from behind with a "Quick, man, before somebody else asks her up!" and he was in the stream and away with the current. He started across, his heart drumming a tattoo on his ribs. Half-way over the floor—and he would have turned back but for the thought of Jim. He kept on, still somewhat indeterminately. When he got near to Miss Pederstone, she looked up almost in surprise, but the ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... you have tattooed immediately above your right wrist could only have been done in China. I have made a small study of tattoo marks and have even contributed to the literature of the subject. That trick of staining the fishes' scales of a delicate pink is quite peculiar to China. When, in addition, I see a Chinese coin hanging from your watch-chain, the ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... until the evening on which we first introduced them to our readers. Then taking her seat by the brightly burning lamp, she drew the letter from her pocket and read it aloud, while Alice drummed an occasional note upon the piano and Eugenia beat a tattoo upon the carpet ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... in ridges to the back of his scalp, worked up by his collar as he moved his head rapidly with every sentence. He seemed altogether unable to sit still or control himself. His boots—brown tops with narrow patent vamps—beat a tattoo upon the floor. No wonder that Felicia shrunk into the corner of her lounge! I felt that it was impossible for me to sit and watch them any longer. I rose ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not even a cloud obscured the blue of the sky for a moment, and not a suspicion of dew fell during the hours of darkness. Only the lightning came, as soon as the sun was down, blazing, flaring, and flashing round the horizon and high overhead; disturbing the darkness as the patter of a tattoo disturbs silence; punctuating the night into periods of sombre, awful blackness by moments of dazzling, blinding white fury, that made the eyes tingle through the succeeding moments of dark, and the ears shrink and tremble, anticipating the rending thunder-crash which never ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... repeated her remark, emphasizing with a little tattoo of her teaspoon on the Chippendale tea-tray before her. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... does every one who knows her. You do, don't you, Mike?" added Donald, and the dog beat a tattoo on the rug with his ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... come with me," Wesley said, coaxingly. But the dog, redoubling the tattoo with his tail, remained obstinately at his post. Wesley stole to the end of the hall and listened, then, hearing the busy clamor of the servants moving from the kitchen to the dining-room, he retraced his steps to the stairs, bounded lightly up and in ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... nervous fear. A terrific gust of wind roared around the corner, shaking the little brown house from rafter to foundation; the great elm trees tossed and groaned in sympathy, and the leafless vines over the porch beat a mournful tattoo against the walls. ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... his pillows, the hectic passed from either gaunt and sallow cheek, leaving the red and blue tattoo marks visible in most ghastly distinctness, while the sweat poured in drops down his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... for several minutes Mary played a tattoo on her machine. Then she keyed down quietly and, setting her transmitter at its maximum, she turned ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... knowing what this irritability meant, and we sat in silence gazing into the glowing ashes. His fingers beat a nervous tattoo against the chair and presently, with some mumbled words, he rose and moved towards the door. Now I knew the fight was on, the fight with the Demon, drink, that was drawing him away from me. I followed ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... "Dick Tattoo" was shouted quick enough along the deck, for everyone now saw that not a moment was to be lost, as the ship had just then heeled over still more. The moment the drummer was called, all hands began tumbling down the ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... costume, one was square and looked like a blanket. The head was thrust through a hole in the centre, and it recalled the "zarapo" of the Mexicans, and the "poncho" of the South American Indian. The second piece was rolled round the body, without being tightened. Almost all, men and women, tattoo their bodies with black lines close together, representing different figures. The operation was thus performed: the pattern was pricked in the skin, and the holes filled with a sort of paste composed of oil and grease, which left ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... he was in the presence of a superior being. "An' what did you say your dad's name was?" asked Raegen, awkwardly. But this was beyond the baby's patience or knowledge, and she waived the question aside with both arms and began to beat a tattoo gently with her two closed fists on Raegen's chin and throat. "You're mighty strong now, ain't you?" mocked the young giant, laughing. "Perhaps you don't know, Missie," he added, gravely, "that your dad ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... soon get very mirthful on the ginger-wine; keeping up a continual buzz, like a colony of bees, sadly itching to be at something—a wish that is not to be realized at once, for little Miss Newsoince is going to do that eternal tattoo, the "Rataplan:"—yes, there she is, in Tom's felt-hat and polonaise, as "La Vivandiere," thumping upon an empty band-box with two knitting-pins, singing, as some of the mammas say, very prettily; but as the boys, who have ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... tattoo on Veronica's door next. She had been taught to be ceremonious with her, at least. No reply was made, and she came to my door again. "I expect Miss Veronica has gone to see poor folks; it is a way she ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... moment two little, futile, frenzied fists began to beat a mad tattoo on Jo Hertz's broad back. Jo tried to turn in the crowd, all indignant resentment. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... possibility, made her seem of less importance; other things began to have their share. But I could not stand, though the blood was returning, warm and tingling, in my legs and hands. She looked at me with a sharp frown puckering her brows a little; beat a hasty tattoo with one of her feet, and cast a startled glance towards the forward door that led on deck. Then she walked to the other side of the table, and sat looking at me in the glow ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... been a cue, the sounds again burst forth—no longer muffled nor faint. They roared; they seemed to pelt through air and drop upon us; they beat about our ears with thunderous tattoo like covered caverns drummed upon by Titans with ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... and protracted sounds.] Roll — N. roll &c v.; drumming &c v.; berloque^, bombination^, rumbling; tattoo, drumroll; dingdong; tantara^; rataplan^; whirr; ratatat, ratatat-tat; rubadub; pitapat; quaver, clutter, charivari^, racket; cuckoo; repetition &c 104; peal of bells, devil's tattoo; reverberation &c 408. [sound of railroad train rolling ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the four slim, young top riders of the ranch force, chaparajos and sombreros being much in evidence. They gave the usual stunts in the typical Western way on a track tramped as hard as asphalt, the tattoo of hoofs making the hard earth ring in the soundless atmosphere. Their feats, singly and together, were marvelous, but there was lacking to the onlookers the charm of novelty, as they had long been accustomed to these ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... the river at eleven. But in passing I'll venture a little prophecy. You're down on your luck now, and a bit hot-hearted in consequence; but some day you will strike it right and come out on top. When you do, you'll be a hard master; tattoo that on your arm somewhere so you'll ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... "On the Beach at Atlantic City." A gun pops foolishly in the rear and the 3-inch bullseye clangs. In a corner behind the Postal Card Photo Taken in a Minute gallery sits Dutch, the world's leading tattooer. Sample tattoo designs cover the two walls. Dragons, scorpions, bulbous nymphs, crossed flags, wreathed anchors, cupids, butterflies, daggers and quaint decorations that seem the grotesque survivals of the mid-Victorian schools of fantasy. Photographs of famous men also cover the walls—Capt. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... rested upon this staircase: in renewed excitement he hurried down the hall and, regardless of the consequence, beat a quick tattoo with his knuckles ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... of rooms, the supply of food, the heating, lights, silver, and livery. He commanded the detachments of the Imperial Guard on duty in the Imperial palaces. He gave orders to beat the reveill and the tattoo, to open and shut the palace gates. When the Emperor was with the army, or travelling, he had to find him quarters. In 1805 the Grand Marshal's budget amounted to 2,338,167 francs. In 1806 it reached the sum of 2,770,841 francs. There were four tables in the palace,—that of the officers ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... carried a leering, insolent expression and his nose was broken, hanging a trifle to one side. He was short, with great hulking shoulders. His black shirt was open at the neck, and he wore blue navy trousers with the familiar wide bottoms. His brown forearms were covered with tattoo-marks. ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... May 15th.—After we had gone to bed last night,—we in the tent, the Doctor and Pilgrim under the fly, which serves as a porch roof,—the heavenly floodgates lifted; the rain, coming in sheets, beat a fierce tattoo on the tightly-stretched canvas, and visions of a sudden rise in the fickle river were uppermost in our dreams. Everything about us was sopping at daybreak; but the sun rose clear and warm from a bed of eastern clouds, and the midnight gale had ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... came away easily, without damage to windlass or hawse-pipes. Slowly as we disappeared into Sound, the light in the hut died away. At 11.30 p.m. the ice around us started to break up, the floes playing tattoo on the ship's sides. We were out in the Sound and catching the full force of the wind. The moon broke through the clouds after midnight and showed us the pack, stretching continuously to northward, and about one mile to the south. As the pack from the southward came up and ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... by means of achote juice. The men wear a strip of this around the loins, and the women a short skirt. On feast-days, or when musquitoes are thick, the men add a little poncho and pantaloons. They do not properly tattoo, but color the skin with achote or anatto. This substance, which serves so many purposes in this part of the world, is the red powder which covers the seeds contained in the prickly bur of the Bixa orellana. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton |
