"Tree trunk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soon as he could get free he would rush after me down the garden, where he would go bounding along, arching his back, and setting up the fur upon his tail. Every now and then he would hide in some clump, and from thence charge out at me, and if I ran after him, away he would rush up a tree trunk, and then crouch on a branch with glowing eyes, tearing the while with his claws at the bark as if in a tremendous state of excitement, ready to bound down again, and race about till he was tired, after which I had only to ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... the tree trunk he drew something wrapped in an old pair of overalls. He unwrapped it, still with his back to the spot where the dog and his master and the girls stood. But the three friends could see over his shoulder as he knelt on the ground, ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... Piang's attention, and without an instant's hesitation, he flung himself on the ground and wormed his body into the welcoming shelter. Pulling a fallen branch in front of the opening, he shrank farther back into the cave. Cave? No, he had taken refuge in a fallen tree trunk, hollowed out by the ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... nurse and I managed to chase them away, but not before they had trampled down a border of pinks and lilies in the cruellest way, and made great holes in a bed of China roses, and even begun to nibble at a Jackmanni clematis that I am trying to persuade to climb up a tree trunk. The gloomy gardener happened to be ill in bed, and the assistant was at vespers—as Lutheran Germany calls afternoon tea or its equivalent—so the nurse filled up the holes as well as she could with mould, burying the crushed and ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... gainsay this, and as not one of us wanted to kill the animal or let her go, Jones had his way. So he went up the tree, passed the first branch and then another. The lioness changed her position, growled, spat, clawed the twigs, tried to keep the tree trunk between her and Jones, and at length got out on a branch in a most favorable ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... spent as our former one had been. The next morning we rode forward to visit the pound which I will briefly describe. It consisted of a large circle of stout stakes, driven into the ground perpendicularly, close together. There was one opening, at the entrance of which a strong tree trunk was placed about a foot from the ground, and at the inner side an excavation was made sufficiently deep to prevent the buffalo from leaping back when once in the pound. From this entrance, on either side, gradually widening, extended two rows of bushy posts, stuck into the ground about fifty ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... wor—a leather-yed,' said David, with sudden energy, and, taking up a stone again, he flung it at a tree trunk opposite, with a certain vindictiveness as though Brother Winterbotham ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thankful for his escape, and so were Richard and Marguerite. They seated themselves on an overturned tree trunk, to recover a little strength. When they had rested a little, the Count quickly threw off his uniform and donned some old clothes belonging to Richard. With a staff in his hand and a bundle on his back, Richard now led the way, while the Count and Marguerite followed. ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... yards wide. And lastly, he could throw a knife backwards while running at full speed with such strength and precision of aim that this new kind of Parthian arrow would go whistling through the air to hide two inches of its iron head in a tree trunk no thicker than a man's thigh. When to these accomplishments are added an equal skill with the musket, the pistol, and the quarter-staff, a good deal of mother wit, a deep hatred for Republicans, against ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a low whine. Jonathan looked up and down the creek valley and along the hillside, but he saw no living thing. Snow, snow everywhere, its white monotony relieved here and there by a black tree trunk. Tige sniffed again and then growled. Turning his ear to the breeze Jonathan heard faint yelps from far over the hilltop. He dropped his axe and the traps and ran the remaining short distance up the hill. When ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... articulate touch of his fingers, obeying the bidding to make no sound. For Jerry, as well as Nalasu, knew that death rustled and lurked in the encircling dark. Again came a softness of movement, nearer than before; but the sped arrow missed. They heard its impact against a tree trunk beyond and a confusion of small sounds caused by the target's hasty retreat. Next, after a time of silence, Nalasu told Jerry silently to retrieve the arrow. He had been well trained and long trained, for with no sound even to Nalasu's ears keener than seeing men's ears, he followed the direction ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... with its lighted candles and its glow of tinsel ornaments is but a tiny image of their sun tree, which began to grow with the first lengthening of the days. They imaged in this dawning light a pillar of fire like a tree trunk that grew and spread over the heavens, bringing through spring all the beneficient gifts of summer. The rays were twigs, the glowing clouds foliage, and the sun, moon and stars golden fruit that hung from these celestial branches. Out ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... then Teddy was not a tenderfoot, even if he did not know as much as some of the others about woodcraft. He walked along the log, made the jump successfully, though falling flat on his face when he gained the rock; managed to gain the second tree trunk, and conducted himself so cleverly on the whole that Ned gave him a wave of approval after he had joined the others some ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... blown down. But they were far away from the shore. At first he did not think of this very much. He had overcome so many difficulties that he thought, "Never mind, I will get my boat to water, no matter where I make it, in some way." So he selected a tree trunk some distance from the bank of the little creek near his cave and ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... toward the top of the tree and calling.] Mr. Woodpecker! [To CHANTECLER.] We will ask the learned gentleman in the green coat. [To the WOODPECKER the upper half of whose figure appears at a round hole high up in the tree trunk; his coat is green, his waistcoat buff, and he wears a red skull-cap.] Do you say ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... there among the trees a yellow leaf or so still hangs, but the birches are full of catkins set with pearly drops. Now and again half, a dozen small birds swoop down on one of these birches, to peck at the catkins, and then look about for a stone or a rough tree trunk to rub the gum from their beaks. Each is jealous of the rest; they watch and chase and drive one another away, though there are millions of catkins for them to take all they will. And the one that is chased never does anything but take to flight. If a little bird comes bearing ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... the old tree trunk, with just his nose and his eyes showing around the end of it, and studied what would be best to do. He was sure that he could get one of those fat hens, but he wanted more. Early that morning Reddy would have been quite contented ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess
... resting on the moss and her eyes deeply troubled. She was gazing fixedly ahead, and her lips were trembling. At once Samson's face grew black. Some one had been making Sally unhappy. Then, he saw beyond her a standing figure, which the tree trunk had hitherto concealed. It was the loose-knitted figure of young ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... squirrel raised its head; and darted up the tree trunk. It was gone. And the snake slid noiselessly off into the underbrush.... The naked girl turned dark, deep eyes upon the stranger. She seemed not to mind her nakedness. And to him it seemed not strange ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... ride. A mile farther on he overtook, on a slight rise, an immense tree trunk slung between three pairs of wheels and dragged by two tremendous horses, harnessed tandemwise. As he passed them came the smell of warm horseflesh and his ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... trained for generations to more than a wild beast's watchfulness, the wilderness was an open book. Nothing at rest or in motion escaped them. They had begun to track game as soon as they could walk; a scrape on a tree trunk, a bruised leaf, a faint indentation of the soil, which no white man could see, all told them a tale as plainly as if it had been shouted in ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... some post of vantage whence to get home at least two or three good blows before the end. But the moment he moved, the grizzly fairly hurled himself downwards. The hunter jumped aside and wheeled, with his knife lifted, his disabled left arm against the tree trunk. But in that same instant, a miracle! Noiselessly the puma's tawny length shot out overhead and fell upon the bear in the very mid-rush ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... reached the fallen tree. Johnny saw that he was carrying a heavy stone. "What's the blamed fool goin' to do?" he said to himself; the man's evident ignorance regarding footprints had lessened the boy's awe of him. But the stranger's next essay took Johnny's breath away. Standing on the fallen tree trunk at its axis on the outcrop, he began to rock it gently. To Johnny's surprise it began to move. The upper end descended slowly, lifting the root in the excavation at the lower end, and with it a mass of rock, and revealing a cavern behind large ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... her hat. She sat leaning against the crisp trunk of a silver birch. Her hands were in her lap. Her dress was crumpled up, displaying her crossed feet and the tantalizing line of her slim ankles. Against the copper green of the tree trunk the mass of her hair was pressed, gold upon the shadow of gold. Her moist lips were half open. Her eyes were away, playing ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... about the drums, but none of them could have been mistaken about the bolt which came out of nowhere to slice through a tree trunk as a knife might slash wet clay. Blaster—and a particular type ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... living in the place, saw an old man floating down the river on a tree trunk whose agonized face and streaming gray hair excited his compassion. He plunged into the torrent, clothes and all, and brought the old man safely ashore. Scarcely had he done this when the upper story ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... and he hurled it at Eadmund, but so skilfully that it did but graze his head, sticking firmly into the tree trunk. And he cried in a ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... pulled him back. The Martian seemed to acquiesce. His single eye closed to a mere slit. He moved to a position between Forepaugh and the tree trunk, braced his feet. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... one tree and "fly" to another. As he springs he spreads out the whitish membranes along each side, holds his flat tail rigid, quivering. Thus he goes down, parachute fashion, on an inclined plane. Just before he gets to the tree trunk which is his objective point, he makes momentum aid his muscles in the accomplishment of ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... been cut from the trunk of a pinon tree in such a manner as to utilize as legs the three branches into which the main stem separated. The other stool illustrated is also cut from a single piece of tree trunk, which has been reduced in weight by cutting out one side, leaving the two ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... what with standing half in the shade and half out of it, and what with the slippery-slidy shadows of the trees falling on them, the Giraffe grew blotchy, and the Zebra grew stripy, and the Eland and the Koodoo grew darker, with little wavy grey lines on their backs like bark on a tree trunk; and so, though you could hear them and smell them, you could very seldom see them, and then only when you knew precisely where to look. They had a beautiful time in the 'sclusively speckly-spickly shadows ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... she did not dream she possessed. The larger ones were cut away with blows incredibly strong and accurate. How and by what might she did not know, but almost at once the man's body was free except for the tree trunk that wedged him against a dead log toward which he ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... the Celts as among other peoples, may owe something to the cult of trees and of stones set up over the dead. The stone, associated with the dead man's spirit, became an image of himself, perhaps rudely fashioned in his likeness. A rough-hewn tree trunk became an image of the spirit or god of trees. On the other hand, some anthropomorphic images, like the palaeolithic or Mycenaean figurines, may have been fashioned without the intermediary of tree-trunk or stone pillar. Maximus ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... more. He has painted landscapes, as well. Professor Barrett Wendell possesses a charming example. Most recently he has been engaged on a large mural decoration, best fitted, perhaps, for a music room, showing Pan seated on a tree trunk by a lake, making into a pipe the broken reeds in his hand after Syrinx eluded him. No horizon line shows. Pan and his tawny leopard skin (his automobile coat, the artist calls it) tell against the high purple banks across the lake. The god is making the best of his loss—making ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... some variation or by the omission of a portion of the old design, to make a corresponding change in the name. Good illustrations of this custom are the minor alterations which have been made in the tree trunk of the "tree" pattern. These may be so slight as to be entirely unobserved by the casual admirer, yet they are responsible for at least three new names: "Pine Tree," "Temperance Tree," and "Tree of Paradise." A minor change in the ordinary ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... into a hole in a tree to carry his mate some food and told her where fire was kept. He was overheard by a squirrel running up the tree trunk. ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... grip on Jack as he leaned against the dead tree trunk. I just caught a glimpse of it, and called to prevent Mark from running ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... and the skiffs serving as passenger ferries to-day on the rivers of eastern Tibet.[542] It reappears among the Arikara Indians of the upper Missouri,[543] and the South American tribes of the Gran Chaco.[544] The first wooden boat was made of a tree trunk, hollowed out either by fire or axe. The wide geographical distribution of the dug-out and its survival in isolated regions of highly civilized lands point it out as one of those necessary and obvious inventions that must have been ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... bull, not as a ballooning bird out of the sky, but as a headlong avalanche over the gate, Rosalie's father tottered to a felled tree trunk, and sat there heaving, and groaned aloud, "Infernal ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... to be in great plenty that day upon the braes of Balmaghie, pursued his insulter along the glade with such excellent aim and good effect that the black unadorned armour of the horseman showed disks of defilement all over, like a tree trunk covered with ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... disappeared among the bushes, and then Jadwin led the way to where a fallen tree lay. "Tie up the horses," he ordered, and it was done. Next the tree trunk was pushed into the stream and all straddled it. By means of rude paddles cut from tree boughs they ferried themselves ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... with a droll excitement. One day a child from the house took her doll out in the grass to play, set it up against a tree trunk, and left it there. It had long light hair which stood out around the head, and it did look rather uncanny, but it was amusing to see the consternation it caused. Blue jays came to trees near by, and talked in low tones to each other; then one ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... head back against the apple-tree trunk, and closed his eyes. The spice-pink, still held at his nostrils, shielded his lips. He looked rather white, his nurse noticed, but she had become accustomed to seeing these moments come upon him—they passed away again, and Dr. Burns had said that no notice need be taken of ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... thunder and lightning; he was used to tremendous storms, and loved nothing better than to stand out on the veranda to watch one raging round among the hills or out at sea. Now it was a positive blessing. Every flash showed him where he was, and he took care to have a tree trunk between himself and the camp. Then during the thunder bursts he made his way swiftly forward, groping cautiously like a blind man. His spirits rose with the excitement, and all his courage ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... can snatch a brand from the fire at any stage of its decomposition, or analyze a decaying tree trunk during any month of its existence, and thus manufacture as many chemical formulae as we like, and give them specific names; but it is evident that this is child's play, not science. The truth is, the slowly decomposing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... sapsucker, the rat-tat-tat of the bold red-headed woodpecker inviting insects in the rotten limb to look out, and he gobbled up, the frisking of the red squirrel as he darted like a flash around to the other side of a tree trunk—-all these and more he noted as he ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... calls to Maurits to take care. But it is too late, for Uncle Theodore has seized Maurits, crushed his ruffle, and is shaking him till he twists like an eel. Then he slings him from him with such force that Maurits staggers backwards any! would have fallen if he had not found support in a tree trunk. And there Maurits stands and gasps "What?" Yes, ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... evidence, it was proved that he fired only the first shot, which disabled Pine without killing him. The second shot, which pierced the man's heart, could only have come from the second revolver, which was, and is, in your possession, Mr. Silver. The bullet found in the tree trunk will fit no other barrel of no other weapon. I'm ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... canoe to the edge of the quai des Subsistances, so-called because of the naval depot. The craft was dubbed out of a breadfruit-tree trunk, and had an outrigger of purau wood, a natural crooked arm, with a small limb laced to it. The canoe was steady enough in such smooth water, and I paddled off to Motu Uta. That islet is a rock of coral upon which soil had been placed unknown years before, and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Jany 7th Tuesday 1806 Set out at Day light, porceded up the Creek about 2 mile and crossed on a tree trunk the Salt makers have fallen across, then proceeded on to the Ocean 3/4 mile & proceded up 3 miles to the mouth of Colimex River about 80 or 100 yds wide verry rapid & Cuts its banks, here we found an old Village of 3 houses, one only inhabited by one familey, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Sean O'Donohue changed to pale lavender. He saw another black snake. It was climbing down a tree trunk with a purposeful air, as if intending to look into the distant uproar. The ground-cars went on, and the driver of the lead car swerved automatically to avoid two black snakes moving companionably along together toward the cheering. ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... which forms suddenly in certain conditions of temperature, and which, as it eddies about, mounts, descends, thunders, tears, razes, crushes, demolishes, uproots, bearing with it great natures and small, the strong man and the feeble mind, the tree trunk and the stalk of straw. Woe to him whom it bears away as well as to him whom it strikes! It breaks ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... again, where long communication trenches began to run through the fields—but you could see none of this from where we stood. Only in the distant hedgerows, perhaps, we might have noticed, if we had looked for it, an occasional broken tree trunk—snapped off short or broken down at a ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... they have so many stores? Why! There was one just for tobacco alone, and one (a lovely one—the Art Shoppy it was) for pictures and vases and stuff, with oh, the dandiest vase made so it looked just like a tree trunk! ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... grouse and small animals were about us all the way, and I had the pleasure of seeing a big white-tailed squirrel dart around and around a tree trunk. This ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... a small party of elderly men. They were at work upon a prone tree trunk of vast girth. They were cutting and splitting it, fresh feed for the fires which must never ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... smooth; but the warriors, in thick moccasins of buffalo hide, with the hair underneath, sped with sure step toward the lake. As Henry and Ross had done, they kept in the thickest of the forest, passing from tree trunk to tree trunk, because the Indian loves a surprise, an easy victory being the greatest of triumphs to him. It was such that they expected now, and the blood of every one of them was inflamed by the logic and eloquence of ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... on which they had been sitting and then put up a hand to help her mount. Holding his fingers she raised herself upon the tree trunk. But suddenly the bark gave way; she slipped, lost her balance, and pitched forward. Lee caught her ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... day in search of game I roved alone to the forest on the bank of the Purna river. Tying my horse to a tree trunk I entered a dense thicket on the track of a deer. I found a narrow sinuous path meandering through the dusk of the entangled boughs, the foliage vibrated with the chirping of crickets, when of a sudden ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore
... velvet of the grass!-and sitting down on the bank under the great basswood, whose roots formed an abrupt bank, she slid her poor blistered, chafed feet into the water, her bare head leaned against the huge tree trunk. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... becomes smoke-stained: the material is so cheap and comfortable, that many of the missionaries prefer it for walls to brick or boarding. The windows are mere holes in the mats to admit light, and the doors are cut with a Mpano (adze) from a single tree trunk, which would be wilful waste if timber were ever wanting. The floor is sometimes sandy, but generally of hard and level tamped clay, to which the European would prefer boarding, and, as a rule, it is clean—no fear of pythogenie from here! The pent-shaped ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... knocked the wigwams down, And pine-tree trunk and limb Began to sprout among the leaves In shape of steeples slim; And out the little wharves were stretched Along the ocean's rim, And up the little school-house shot To keep the boys ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... they did not lie down for the night until they had built a new fire near the trunk of the tree. Having no ax to chop with, they had to burn the log in two. They put the fire at a place that would cut off enough of the tree trunk to make ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston
... look, for now he remembered the Beautiful Wicked Witch and the bird she had caged in there. He saw a door in the tree trunk ajar, and swinging to and fro with tiny tinkling music. He peeped in, and between the swingings caught glimpses of little blue and yellow flowers arranged in tight bunches in hanging vases. He could smell their sweetness even out ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... machine suddenly caught on to what they were doing. It tried to escape their range by going up, but they followed it. By this time the compensators were already beginning to fail. Haywire instruments jerked the machine back down and then side to side, then into a tree trunk, blindly. It rebounded and dipped low, almost touching the ground before it curved back up. Some of Glynnis' shots were missing, but Nelson made every shot count, even while the ...
— The Happy Man • Gerald Wilburn Page
... peppers, onions, and the like. This was lighted by three small windows, and furnished with a row of dressers filled with crockery and kitchen ware, and permeated by that savory smell which presages a generous breakfast On one side of the fireplace rested the great hominy mortar, cut from a tree trunk, found in all Virginia kitchens, and on the other the universal brick oven with its iron doors,—the very doors, I thought, that had closed over Chad's goose when Henny was a girl. Between the mortar and the oven opened, or rather caverned, a fireplace ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... remarks, the elephants of Pliny and Sindbad are equally conscious of the value of ivory. Pliny (viii. 3) quotes Herodotus about the buying of ivories and relates how elephants, when hunted, break their "cornua" (as Juba called them) against a tree trunk by way of ransom. AElian, Plutarch, and Philostratus speak of the linguistic intelligence and religious worship of the "half-reason with the hand," which the Hindus term "Hathi"unimanus. Finally, Topsell's Gesner (p. 152) makes elephants bury their tusks, "which commonly drop ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... with a kind of sombre triumph. "The Sistine Chapel. I've got a print of it in my room. That's where you saw it." She leaned back against a tree trunk with her knees drawn up to her chin, and blew out clouds of smoke, and looked more than usually grey and dishevelled and in need of a bath. "In a way it's like that with Jeffries. He rubs his beastly old thumb over my rottenest charcoal sketch, ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... spot, and, seating ourselves on an old fallen tree trunk, I told of my success, even to the using of his horse. Never before or since did I see Uncle Lance give way to such a fit of hilarity as he indulged in over the perfect working out of our plans. With his ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... a safe place in some tree where until we went back I could put the two rings and locket, as I feared that they might be seen on my neck. When you called and said, 'We've seen you; don't hide,' I thought that you had discovered that I was a thief and I started to run and fell over the tree trunk. I had been pretty warm while walking up the hill and I guess you were correct,—it was the heat. That's all," she moaned wearily. "You may give me up. I knew the time would come, but I had hoped to have had Mollie in a Home before I was taken," and the girl lay back on the ground ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... concealment behind every irregularity. Thus approaching, I discovered the flaring beacon to be a huge pine knot stuck into the earth wall, blazing right merrily. Lying at full length, with head outstretched from behind the tree trunk that concealed my body, I gazed forward into a small room, possibly a dozen feet in width, the walls concealed by grotesquely pictured bark, its floor covered with a rude matting, dyed in fanciful colors. Somewhat to the left of where I lay uprose a huge, grim figure, roughly ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... unfordable streams he lost his way and spent precious hours groping about in pine forests, dark as twilight, their boughs bent to the onslaught of the storm. Crossing a watercourse he fell and his matches were soaked, and that night, crouched against a tree trunk, a creature less protected than the beasts who had their shelters, he sucked the ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... ran up fearlessly and began fingering the bits of stuff that clung to him from the fields and ditches. In his beard were some stray rose leaves and the feather of a little bird. The children had an air of sheltering against a tree trunk—woodland creatures—mice or squirrels chattering among the roots, or birds flown in to settle on a hedge. They were not one whit afraid. For nothing surprised them on this marvellous morning; ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... herself against the tree trunk at the giddy brink of the precipitous rock; like him, her eyes rested on the smooth waters below her, or on the far-away misty distance where Crianan slumbered; but, unlike him, her eyes, as they looked, were ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... the ocelot might come after him even up there, and lost no time in climbing from root to root. At last his head projected through the mesh of verdure into clear daylight. Jack lifted himself to solid ground and leaned against the tree trunk, out ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... slowly across the garden and the lane, and found her way to a little seat she had made on the side of the bluff overlooking the water. Here, her back to a tree trunk, she sat immobile, trying to still the turmoil of memories that ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... and were utterly useless as guides; they sat now amidst the leaves near the tent eating their food; dark shadows in the glow-worm light, the glistening black skin of a knee or shoulder showing up touched by the glimmer in which leaf and liana, tree trunk and branch, seemed like marine foliage bathed in the watery ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... body, he scampers from the roots of the trees to the terminal twigs at the top, inspecting every cone, cranny and knot hole, chirping his fine, high-keyed notes, sometimes in a querulous tone, and again in the most cheerful and good-natured temper imaginable, now gliding up a tree trunk, now scudding down head foremost, anon circling in a ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... was at that moment watching from the tree trunk, leaped down; the second joined him, and both paced back and forth excitedly. They had heard the sounds of a coming that were too fine for my ears. A stir in the underbrush, and Mother Lynx, a great savage creature, stalked out proudly. She carried a dead hare gripped across the middle ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... or jungle could stop him. He would have welcomed them. In many respects they were the friends of a crafty messenger. But that was an open beach, and there was no other way, and as things stood now every bush around, every tree trunk, every deep shadow of house or fence would conceal Tengga's men or such of Daman's infuriated partisans as had already made their way to the Settlement. How could he hope to traverse the distance ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... rolling, and the fringe, which forms the foliage, will stand out on the outside of the rolled part or trunk of the tree. When you reach the solid, narrow part of the paper strip it will roll into a smooth, round stick, forming the lower part of the tree trunk. Paste the last wrapped corner of the paper roll in place and clip the tree trunk off even across the bottom edge; then press it into a hole in the centre of an empty spool of ordinary size, and there's your tree! You can vary the foliage by ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... The camera hung by a strap over his shoulder. He took hold of the strap and walked to a tree. He swung the box above his head and brought it down with a thump against the tree trunk. The sharp breaking sound—the delicate parts of the machine being broken—was sweet to his ears. It was as though a song had come suddenly from between his lips. Again he swung the box and again brought it down ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... same moment a dark figure stepped from behind a tree trunk. The man beside Roy held up ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... printing establishment bore testimony to the sordid avarice of the old "bear," who never spent a penny on repairs. The old house had stood in sun and rain, and borne the brunt of the weather, till it looked like some venerable tree trunk set down at the entrance of the alley, so riven it was with seams and cracks of all sorts and sizes. The house front, built of brick and stone, with no pretensions to symmetry, seemed to be bending beneath the weight of a worm-eaten ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... to shet the stingin' varmints in!" he exclaimed. "One of us has got to walk out with a plug, 'long that 'ere tree trunk, and stop ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... it then that thou dost not kill the man-cub. He is no tree trunk to sharpen thy blunt claws upon. But what are those Master Words? I am more likely to give help than to ask it"—Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chisel talons at the end of it—"still ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... finishing school in a shed. She continued it in the afternoon. Then she visited the yards of the people, and they crowded round her and brought her gifts of food. Later she leant against a fallen tree trunk and talked to one and another. In the gathering dusk she sat on a small stool and attended to the sick and dressed their sores. After dinner some men and lads arrived carrying lamps, and she held her catechumens' class—a very earnest ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... people of the woods came peeping through the greenery surveying her, weighing her, examining her, testing her spirit of good or ill. A little squirrel went scampering up one huge tree trunk and down another, just a pace ahead, scouting for the other pixies of the woods, till with a scurr-r-r and chitter—chipper—ee, he whisked back in his tracks. "She's all right, people," he said. Then a whisky jack ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... drowned by the crash outside. The lightning had struck a big old tree that overhung the house. The tree trunk was splintered right down from the top, and before the sound of the thunder died away the broken-off part of that tree fell right ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... us as they heard that, and huddled together in twos and threes, looking out to whence the sound came. As for Brand the thrall, he fell on his knees and hid his face against a tree trunk, crying faintly: ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... I had leaped across the brook and pushed my way into the thicket. It was empty. I stared about me; I scanned every tree trunk, every bush. Suddenly I saw him. He was seated on a fallen log, his head resting in his hands, his rusty black robe gathered around him. For a moment my hair stirred under my cap; sweat started on ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... grey and unattractive, and unfortunately the unprepossessing but valuable outer coat is polished away. This is done in a mortar hollowed out of a section of a tree trunk or out of a large stone. One may see a young man or a young woman pounding the rice in the mortar with a heavy wooden beetle or mallet. Often the beetle is fastened to a beam and worked by foot. Or the polishing apparatus may be driven by water, oil or steam power. Constantly in the country ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the damp hollow the Jerseyman had no further difficulty; he breasted the hill and kept a hand extended so as to avoid colliding with a tree trunk. Expecting at any instant to have a bull's-eye lantern flashed in his eyes, which he did not want to happen, he ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... freeze again. It is thought that the rapid and rather great change in temperature of the bark and wood is the primary cause of sun scald. Whatever the cause, we know that it can be prevented by shading the tree trunk. This can be done by heading the trees low so that the branches shade the trunk, or by shading the south side of the trunk with a board 6 or 8 inches wide, or by wrapping the trunk with burlap or similar material. Much of the injury ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... stretched his arms over his head with a regretful sigh. "My mind comes out of it as stubbornly as Sigmund's sword came out of the tree trunk. We will return to it the first thing in the morning. You have done me a service which I shall never forget while my mind ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... moving heavy weights is necessarily very primitive, for, with the exception of a few wheel-barrows, there are no vehicles of any kind here. A huge tree trunk was carried into the square one day; pieces of wood had been lashed across it about two feet apart throughout its length. One or two men on each side of each piece then lifted it and the whole eighty or hundred men marched the trunk along with ease at a jog trot. It would indeed be ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... back and the sight of the tiny thread of golden light always renewed her courage. Once in a while she felt quite sure that she could see the nose of some wild beast poking out in front of her, but when she came nearer it proved to be the joint in a tree trunk, or some strange fungus which had grown on a low branch. Then she would laugh at her own fear and go on. One of the wonderful things about the mysterious little thread which she carried in her hand was, that it seemed to open a path behind it, so that one could easily follow ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... to the tree trunk. He scarcely breathed. The approaching figures came directly toward the ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... "Idylls of the King," illustrated by Gustav Dore, and Kitty had never a doubt in her mind that these were the woods the artist had depicted. There could be no others like them. Here Enid rode with Launcelot by her side; on that silvery beach, where the old bleached tree trunk lay as it must have lain for generations, Vivien had sat at Merlin's feet. There, in that space carpeted by wind-flowers and primroses, Queen Guinevere and Launcelot had said their ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... in the hope that one of the bullets would find its mark. But the tree trunk was enormously thick and bullets imbedded themselves in it without injury to the marksman, snugly sheltered on ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... Friendly Forest Pool Is the Woodland Singing School. Little Squirrel Bushy Tail Sings the Do, Ray, Mee, Fa scale. Uncle Bullfrog sings "Ker-chunk" From his floating elm tree trunk. And a big good-natured bear Sings ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... distinguish spruce trees from fir, by the sharp, prickly spires of the former, and so he was never at a loss which trees to search. No sooner had he begun, than he was surprised at the quantities that he found. To an ordinary observer the trunk of the spruce tree seems like any other tree trunk—no rougher, and perhaps somewhat smoother than many; but Tom now found that on every tree almost there were little round excrescences, which, on being picked at with the knife, came off readily, and proved to be gum. Vast quantities of a substance which goes ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... frightened imagination like the servants of the savage creature that she had left in the tree-tops. She slipped out again, in spite of wind and rain, obedient to his command, and as she dropped her bundle at the foot of the tree trunk, she whispered, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... best when he goes nutting. His beautiful swift movements are checked by the thickness of the hazels. In a beech grove he has more liberty to run and leap. Sometimes you will see twenty at once all nibbling the beech nuts on the ground. On hearing you they make for a tree trunk, and, rushing up it for a yard or two, stop suddenly, absolutely still, with fearful eyes, and ears intently and intensely cocked. If you stand equally still the squirrel will stay there, motionless, like a piece of the tree, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... a big female cat, and, although the season was early, she had littered and her kittens, three of them, were bedded in a heap of leaves blown by the wind into a hollow tree trunk. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... tent, and I followed him into the woods. Beneath the overhang of the cliff he stopped, his piercing eyes flashing in the darkness as I advanced with the torch. Patiently he waited beneath a leaning tree trunk. Ten feet from him I knelt upon the velvet needles of the forest, and with torch held aloft, steadied the ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... this exquisite poem of twilight, that if only this one picture of the woods had been painted it were better than to have produced a thousand inferior scenes. How beautiful that glow on the "Venerable old tree trunk and the opening beyond the great boulder." It is indeed a wonderful creation filled with the mystery and silence of approaching nightfall. As you gaze at the seemingly deepening gloom, you feel the very spirit of the violet ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... old timid soul, Toby, that isn't any snake at all, only one of those big wild-grape vines, like enough, that's ketched on to that floating tree trunk close by. She's all twisted and turned, and I reckon a fellow as crazy over wild animals and things, like you are, might be excused for thinkin' it ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... draw rein at last to seek counsel as to their further proceedings, when at a turn of the lane he caught sight of a spreading clump of trees and what seemed to be a village green, about which clustered a few humble cottages, and an inn whose sign projected from a tree trunk that overhung the road. ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... while going through a forest in the Amazons. The spider was a hairy fellow, with a body two inches long, and eight legs measuring seven inches each, from end to end. The writer describing the incident says: "I was attracted by a movement of the monster on a tree trunk; it was close beneath a deep crevice in the tree, across which was stretched a dense white web. The lower part of the web was broken, and two small birds, finches, were entangled in the pieces. One of them was ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... long pole and prodded about in the tree-top until he satisfied himself that there was nothing formidable inside. Then setting his gun against a tree trunk, he crawled into ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... of the temples have been rebuilt before the old material was so rotted as to make them hopeless. Wood is a magnificent material when it is used in such massive structures as it is here. The biggest bell in the world, twelve feet high, is hung on a great tree trunk in a belfry with a curled-up roof of flower-like proportions, first having been hauled to the top of the high hill. We shall hear it boom next Saturday. We heard the one in Nara, the deepest thing I ever thought to hear, nine feet high. They are beautiful ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... had but an instant, but he had secured himself out of reach of my eyesight; had faded into the background as a partridge screens itself behind mottled leaves. If I followed him, a knife would be slipped out at me from behind stump or tree trunk, and the dog might not have ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... we took advantage of the cover, sinking down behind any mound, bush, or tree trunk in the neighborhood. The trees, of course, furnished no protection from the Mauser bullets. Once I was standing behind a large palm with my head out to one side, very fortunately; for a bullet passed through the palm, filling my left eye ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt |
