"Ledge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which show above water, making it a very "nice" and toilsome thing to steer and track a boat safely over it, but the tracking path itself is stony and firm, a fortunate thing at such a place. There are no exposures of rock at the foot of this rapid; but along its upper part runs a ledge of asphalt-like rock as smooth as a street pavement, with an outer edge as neatly rounded as if done with a chisel. This was the finest bit of tracking path on the river, excepting, perhaps, the great pavement beneath the ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... obliterated all sense of personal danger or fatigue. After a friendly talk with the men in the extreme front, and a peep again and again through the loop-holes, watched and fired upon continually, by the wary foe, I descended to the second ledge, where the sound of music reached us. We followed it quickly, and in a few moments stood behind a rude litter of boughs, on which lay a gray-haired soldier, face downward, with a comrade on either side. They did not perceive us, but sang on the closing ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... recalled a certain soft afternoon of the previous October, when, passing from the first rapturous flurry of exploration to a detailed inspection of the old house, she had pressed (like a novel heroine) a panel that opened at her touch, on a narrow flight of stairs leading to an unsuspected flat ledge of the roof—the roof which, from below, seemed to slope away on all sides too abruptly for any but ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... BREVE}ni, the second son of Stenatlihan, is the God of Water, because his mother conceived as she slept one afternoon under a ledge of rock from which drops of water trickled upon her. In the dance for rain all prayers and songs are addressed to him. It was he who created ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... had a centre, and a strange one. A little ledge of rock ran out into deep water, and upon it, rising from a heap of light-coloured clothing, like a white pillar, in the midst of the sombre green foliage, rose the naked carcass of Thomas Troubridge, Esq., preparing for a header, while at his feet were grouped three or four black fellows, one ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... reduced them so low that they should become the slaves of despots, and thus have all the vices inherent in a state of slavery. Nina and Ada did not venture down into the bay among the crowd, but stood apart on a ledge, raised some thirty or forty feet above the sands, at the entrance of the ravine, where they could overlook the whole scene. The old fishermen and their wives were seated in groups, either on the rocks under the cliffs, or ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... he could see nothing but ledge and jutting block, whitened by the sea-birds which here brought up their young in peace, for even the reckless boys had looked upon it as too hazardous to descend. The sea far below was just creaming among the rocks which peered above the water, and ran out ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... ourselves with torches from some dry branches of the calabash-tree, and, headed by a guide, moved towards the mouth of the nearest and largest of the two caves. We descended into this by a ladder of sixteen steps, and arrived upon a broad ledge of rock, where we halted for a few minutes to light the torches, and accustom our vision to the gloom; when, both of these ends being attained, we advanced a few paces into the cave, and a sight of the most indescribable sublimity ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... sketching on cards the hoary locks of the ancient river-god. All tended to harmonize with the natural grandeur of the scene. I gazed long. I saw how here mutability and unchangeableness were united. I surveyed the conspiring waters rushing against the rocky ledge to overthrow it at one mad plunge, till, like toppling ambition, o'er-leaping themselves, they fall on t' other side, expanding into foam ere they reach the deep channel ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Dave might strike a ledge, 'pocket', or 'pot-hole' holding wash rich with gold. He had prospected on the opposite side of the cemetery, found no gold, and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard. He had prospected at ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... the rocky pathway, that was a short cut to Edwardstown and led along a low ledge of kopjes commanding a lovely view of the valley which lay between the Mission Station and Zimbabwe's lofty northern mountain, Meryl walked slowly, with a sense of desolation she could neither gauge nor dispel; and over and over through her mind as she looked to the far kopjes passed the lines ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... on the top ledge of all the windows and doors just yesterday," admitted Lark, "and there was nothing there. Did you put ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... sympathy for it as for something that was human and a brother. And now he was on the trail of it at last. From every point that morning it had seemed almost to nod down to him as he climbed and, when he reached the ledge that gave him sight of it from base to crown, the winds murmured among its needles like a welcoming voice. At once, he saw the secret of its life. On each side rose a cliff that had sheltered it from storms ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... of wings, in the room. A robin hopped in at the window and perched daintily on the table-ledge, its delicate claws outlined against the whiteness of the dust-sheet, its head inquisitively on one side, as if it were asking the reason of the musician's unusual silence. Suddenly, the little creature fluffed out its ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... was told—for the old lady spoke as if she were used to being obeyed without question—and found herself floating upwards, until she alighted on a broad ledge right in front ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... benefit of your news quickly, Winnie," said Ada Irvine, looking round from her snug seat on the broad window-ledge; "surely we must be going to hear something wonderful when you are so excited;" and the girl eyed her animated school-fellow ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... overcoat in which he had faced the relatively temperate air of Boston seemed no thicker than a sheet of paper on the bleak heights of Northridge. George Faxon said to himself that the place was uncommonly well-named. It clung to an exposed ledge over the valley from which the train had lifted him, and the wind combed it with teeth of steel that he seemed actually to hear scraping against the wooden sides of the station. Other building there was none: the village lay far down the road, ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... behind the ledge changed their positions after nearly every shot. And Hal and Noll, after the warm, uncomfortable experience of having bullets fan their faces persistently, found it advisable to crouch low and dart here and there, ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... the moonlight a long, very thin, very dark figure bending over the Bible, and apparently earnestly scanning the page. As if my movement disturbed the figure, it suddenly darted up, jumped off the window-ledge on to the washstand, then to the ground, and flitted quietly across the room to the table where my jewellery was." That was the last she saw of it. She thought it was some one trying to steal her jewellery, ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... of clambering over shale-strewn gullies, up sun-baked watercourses, and we found ourselves toiling up the ragged slope of a bluff; and soon we stood upon a rocky ledge with the thunders beneath us. Damp gusts beat upward over the blistering scarp of the cliff. I lay down, and crawling to the edge, looked over. Two hundred feet below me—straight down as a pebble drops—a watery ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... left the house early, and proceeded first to the temple of Sybilla, built on a rock opposite to the waterfall. Afterwards I went to view the grotto of Neptune, and that through which the Arno flows, rushing out of the cavern to fall headlong over a ledge of lofty rocks, and form the cascade of Tivoli. The best view of this fall is obtained from the bridge. Besides many pretty minor cascades, I saw a number of ruins; the most remarkable among these was ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... ghastly degenerate face, and his neck encircled by a heavy iron collar, was chained to the strong bars of a window. His hands and feet were also chained. The chain at his neck was so short that he could only move a few inches away from the iron bars. He sat crouched like a vicious dog on the window-ledge, howling and spitting at us as we passed. His clothes were torn to shreds; his eyes were sunken and staring, his long, thin, sinewy arms, with hands which hung as if dead, occasionally and unconsciously touching this or that near them. I tried ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... it lay on the ledge I crept into the cave to reconnoiter. I found a large chamber, possibly a hundred feet in diameter and thirty or forty feet in height; a smooth and well-worn floor, and many other evidences that the cave had, at some remote period, been inhabited. The back of the cave was so lost ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... herself and read her hymn-book. She rummaged through her drawers, and was surprised to find all sorts of things that belonged to her. She was sitting on the floor, reading a hymn and humming the tune of it to herself, when something stirred at the window. She glanced up; a white dove was sitting on the ledge and looking at her. When the eyes of the dove and of the girl met, the bird flew away. Barefoot watched it soar out over ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... well as on a mass of dense Venetian curls. If you are happy you will find yourself, after a June day in Venice (about ten o'clock), on a balcony that overhangs the Grand Canal, with your elbows on the broad ledge, a cigarette in your teeth and a little good company beside you. The gondolas pass beneath, the watery surface gleams here and there from their lamps, some of which are coloured lanterns that move mysteriously in the darkness. There are some evenings in June when there are too ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... are we whom here thou seest so defaced, both of us," replied one weeping, "but thou, who art thou that hast asked of us?" And the Leader said, "I am one that descends with this living man down from ledge to ledge, and I intend to show Hell to him." Then their mutual support was broken; and trembling each turned to me, together with others that heard him by rebound. The good Master inclined himself wholly toward me, saying, "Say to them what thou wilt;" and I began, since he was willing, "So ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... at first set this vase upon the ledge of the tray, and it was nearly falling. I was frightened at that accident, which makes me particularly remember the thing. I made room upon the tray for the vase, and left it quite safe upon the tray: I ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... seen the window-shutter slowly widen, and then a cautious hand appear on the ledge. She watched the shutter swing in, further and further, and then the stealthy figure, with its padded feet, emerge out of the darkness into the half-lighted room. She could even see the pallor of the intruder's face, and his quick movement of warning that reminded her of the part ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... from the window ledge, shrilly demanding crumbs. Crumbs made him think of Mrs. Kukor's stealthy gift. Sure enough, the yellow bowl held soup. In the soup was spaghetti—the wide, ribbony, slippery kind he especially liked, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... appearance at the "Tub," acquitted himself creditably. He took a mild header from the spring-board without more than ordinary splashing, and swam across the pool and back in fair style. Gosse, who only went in from the low ledge, and swam half-way across and back, was good enough to give him some very good advice, and promise to make a good swimmer of him in time. Whereat Heathcote looked grateful, and wished Dick had been there to astonish ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... hostile natives who were then running towards him, some to climb the hill, others branching out to surround it. He knew that those on the flat could cut him off before he could descend and that his only chance lay in 'bluff.' Stepping on to the outermost ledge in full view of the enemy he calmly laid down his rifle, drew off first one and then the other of his velschoens (home-made hide shoes, in those poorer days worn without socks) and after quietly ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... very low. Her little gloved hand lay upon the narrow window ledge. He laid his own gently upon it. The two hands were shaking like twin leaves in the breeze. Hers was not drawn away. After a pause, neither knew how long, he felt the warm fingers turn and clasp themselves tremulously about his ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... passed. The figure of Wilks went with slow bounds over toward the back of the ledge where the glassite shelter housed the treasure. It was all dark off there. Wilks went into the gloom, but before I lost sight of him he came back. As though he had changed his mind he headed for the foot of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... pewter tankard, exquisitely polished. The polish of it caught and cast back the sunlight in prismatic circles on the scoured deal table. The girl—Margaret—stood for a moment in the fuller sunlight by the window, lingering there to pick a dead leaf from a geranium on the ledge. ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on a ledge about three feet above the water, was Red Pichot, holding the pike-pole and smiling down upon him smoothly. On the rim above squatted Bug Mitchell, scowling, and gripping his knife as if he thirsted to settle up all scores on the instant. Imagination was ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the choir. In fact it is difficult to resist the conclusion that they are Archbishop Roger's south choir buttresses in disguise,[111] and that the arches between them were thrown across merely to form a straight boundary for the vaulting, and to carry a ledge which (when there was no storey above) might support the external roof. The piers indeed are carried up, with a 'straight joint' on either side, above the springing of the arches, and the latter are constructed as if they had been let into the piers ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... Badly-concerted operations may not succeed, and Huber witnessed an accident due to this cause.[105] Two walls facing each other were to be united by an arch. A foolish worker had begun to form a horizontal ledge on the summit of one of the walls without paying attention to the fact that the other wall was very much higher. By continuing the project the ceiling would have come against the middle of the opposite ceiling instead of resting on its summit. Another ant passes, examines affairs with ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... ahead. As he turned a place where a big ledge of rock jutted out, hiding what was behind from view, he uttered ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... yonder, on the ledge of the valley?" The Atlantean's blunt outstretched finger indicated a towering pine sprouting from among a mass of reddish volcanic rock at the ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... no arcades, pilasters, or columns; but a narrow ledge runs along it, which was probably used for the purpose of approaching the projecting consoles, 120 in number, placed in couples at equal distances between two columns, and pierced with a large hole, which corresponds with a similar one in the cornice, evidently ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... thickly grown with bushes, and spotted with flowers, while tall trees crowned the crest of the eminence. Of a horseshoe form, the two ends approached the edge of the stream, leaving, however, to the east a narrow ledge, by which the vale could be approached. The space between the water and the bottom of the cliff was occupied by a sward of velvety smoothness, while beneath the rock was a dark and gloomy natural cavern. The ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... dare!" she called as she flung handfuls of loose snow from the window-ledge. A quick volley of balls followed, then the door burst open. Sandy and Ruth Nelson stood laughing ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... the-lattice with all her force. The bell struck twelve, and the Lady Imogene delivered herself to her fate. Slowly and fearfully she descended, long suspended in the air, until her feet at length touched a ledge of rock. Cautiously feeling her footing, she now rested, and looked around her. She had descended about twenty feet. The moon shone bright on the rest of the descent, which was more rugged. It ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... the house. Overtaken by a snowstorm, he was, however, constrained to sleep there and was conducted by the housekeeper to an old chamber, long unused, where (since at first he could not sleep) he amused himself by looking over a few mildewed books piled on one corner of the window-ledge. They and the ledge were scrawled all over with writing, Catharine Earnshaw, sometimes varied to Catharine Heathcliff, and again to Catharine Linton. Nothing save these three names was written on the ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... of us got into the Patience M.—she's Jonadab's catboat—and sot sail for the Crab Ledge. And we hadn't more'n got our lines over the side than we struck into a school of dogfish. Now, if you know anything about fishing you know that when the dogfish strike on it's "good-by, cod!" So when Stumpton hauled a big ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... rocks and shelves, few parts of the English coast are more dangerous to ships driving in a storm. The most dreaded parts are the Needles and Shingles, at the western point; Rocken-end Race at the south, and Bembridge Ledge at the eastern extremity: few winters pass without the melancholy catastrophe of shipwreck; though the danger is now of course diminished by the establishment of Light-houses—especially of the new one near Niton.—Owing to this cause, and to the precipitous nature ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... what he was standing on—a little ledge of shale not over five or six feet in length and two feet wide—for in lower water I had often from its advantage cast a fly down below the big boulder. But I knew it to be surrounded by water fifteen ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... the Winchester, he slipped over the ledge; and Rome leaned suddenly forward, looking ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... the groove, and made off at the top of my speed for the wall behind me. For there, at that critical point, it occurred to me suddenly that the sixth and last flash of the machine had come and gone just as I stood poising myself on the ledge of the window-sill; and I thought to myself—rightly as it turned out—this additional evidence would only strengthen the belief in the public mind that Mr. Callingham had been murdered by the man whom the servants saw ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... had the wind variable till we passed the line, and made the Cape Bassa, in the latitude of four degrees ten minutes; from thence, the monsoons beginning to change to the N.E. and N.N.E., we led it away, with the wind large, to the Maldives, a famous ledge of islands, well known by all the sailors who have gone into those parts of the world; and, leaving these islands a little to the south, we made Cape Comorin, the southernmost land of the coast of Malabar, and went round the isle ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... action to the words, Grace stole softly up the deserted walk and crouched under the window from whence the light had come. Clinging to the window ledge, she cautiously raised herself until her head was on a level with the glass. What she saw caused her to hold her breath with astonishment. Was she awake or did she dream? At one side of the room stood a small table, and on the table, in full ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... approached its farther end and stood by the pinnacle of rock that, like a lonely watchman, forever looked down on the blue and golden plains. A mountain chipmunk stared at him, flicked its tail, and dived under a flat ledge; a bird whose real home was a thousand miles off in the north faced the upland breeze and sang in its unknown tongue. Jim drew still nearer the rocky spire, rounded a ledge, and faced an unexpected sight. In a little open lodge of willows, ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... thou make me content with thy name?" "O leaf of mine, in whom, while only awaiting, I took pleasure, I was thy root." Such a beginning he, answering, made to me. Then he said to me: "He from whom thy family is named,[3] and who for a hundred years and more has circled the mountain on the first ledge, was my son and was thy great-grandsire. Truly it behoves that thou shorten for him his long fatigue with thy works. Florence, within the ancient circle wherefrom she still takes both tierce and nones,[4] was abiding in sober and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... a wheel was wrenched off and it fell on its side and began to roll like a ball, as a house torn from its foundations might roll from the summit of a mountain. Then, reaching the ledge of the last ravine, it described a circle, and, falling to the bottom, burst open as an egg might do. It was no sooner smashed on the stones than the old beggar, who had seen it going past, went down toward it slowly amid the rushes, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... they found their way to the cellar. The window was closed, but not locked, and resting against the wall was a plank. It leaned obliquely, as if left in a hurry. Fitzgerald took it up, and bridged between the box and the window ledge. Breitmann gave him a leg up, and in another moment he was examining the brick wall of the great chimney under a circular white patch of light. A dozen rows of bricks had been cleverly loosened. There were also evidences of chalk marks, something ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... lest a cinder should fall on it in her absence, and once more taking her umbrella, and lifting the key from its nail on the cupboard door, went out into the rain. She locked the door on the outside, and hid the big key on the ledge of the manger in the shippon. Then she was outside in the steady rain, on the gritty turnpike road washed clean to the stones. As she set off, it was a small relief to her that she would not be noticed, unless when she passed the cottages, because there were ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... he said, with his usual assurance. And in the corridor that surrounded the hemicycle they climbed up on to a narrow ledge in the wall and sat side by side in perfect luxury, not dreaming that they were doing anything unusual or undignified. As a fact, they were not. Other couples were perched on other ledges, and still others on the cold steam-pipes. A girl ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... hand, I struck a knife—his knife! It was closed. I opened it, looking at the long blade. The idea had already formed in my mind. I smeared the blade with blood, and dropped the knife, open as it was, over the cliff, being careful that it should fall on the ledge about twenty feet below. Then I smeared blood upon the brink, tore a scrap from my coat, and left it there, throwing the coat with the hat into the sea. I was never seen in Chisley again. I walked all that night. In London I read of the arrest of Done on a charge ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... as do all the others, a number of odd-looking animals, large-headed, and with long slender bodies, to all appearance covered with a coat of dark brown wool, crawling and floundering about among the kelp, in constantly increasing numbers. Each new ledge of reef, as it rises to the surface, becomes crowded with them, while hundreds of others disport ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... than in the days of the lower West Side apartment but quite as capable despite her secret knowledge that she receives a greater salary than the mighty Diggs, is superintending the hanging of a row of stockings along the mantel-ledge, stockings of variegated hues and ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... are compared to the thin layer of earth which covers a ledge of stone. Seed which falls into such soil springs up most quickly because warmed by the underlying rock; but as the roots cannot strike downward, the grain soon withers beneath the scorching sun. So there are hearers who receive with joy the message ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... ledge, where they could rest, with a wall of ice rising sheerly above them. He would have to climb that alone, and then pull Brave up with the rope. He started working his way up the perpendicular face, clinging by the pick of his ice-staff, chopping footholds with the hatchet; ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... walkin up an daan, Dooin nowt but fume an fidge! He luk'd at th' pig—then daan he set, I'th nook o'th' window ledge, He saw th' back booan wor stickin aght, Like th' thin end ov a wedge; It luk'd like an owd blanket Hung ovver ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... of the legislation of extermination, the animal sped nimbly along the ledge of a cliff, becoming visible from the ravine below, a tawny streak against the gray rock. Swift though he was, a jet of red light flashing out in the dusk was yet swifter. The echoing crags clamored with the report of a rifle. The ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... dangerous and slippery place, but Uncle Jack did not hesitate. Walking along a slippery ledge that was lapped by the water, he managed to reach the drowning man, holding to him his stick; and then as the fellow clutched it tightly he managed to guide him towards the edge, where Uncle Dick knelt down, and at last caught him by the collar and drew him out, ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... water roars, boils, and, striking projections, spouts upward in jets whose plumy top blows off in sheets of spray. It is tormented into whirlpools; it is combed into fine threads, and strays whitely over a rugged ledge like old men's hair; it takes all curves of grace and arrow-flights of force; it is water doing all that water can do or be made to do. The painter who spent a year in making studies of it would not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... immediate result that the men holding the ladder turned tail with one accord and fled. The ladder slipped a few inches, and the ascending Samson, crowbar and all, very neatly came to the ground with a crash. Fortunately, however, he just managed to grab the ledge of the door, and a dozen reporters seized him by the shoulders and dragged him, safe, but a ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... beside—for some temporary protection or retreat. In vain: the uncertainty of the light only allowed him to discover houses in which no portico extended its friendly shelter, and where even the doors seemed divested of the narrow ledge wherewith they are, in more civilized ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Margaret's hand in his, then back for Miss Penny, till they sat looking down into a deep dark basin, almost circular: lined with the most lovely pink and heliotrope corallines: studded with anemones, brown and red and green: every point and ledge decked with delicately-fronded sea-ferns and mosses: and the whole overhung with threatening ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... half inclined to call the young officer back and tell him how Boyle had criticised her costume on the road. But Mr. Ashford was at that time entirely preoccupied with his men around a ledge of rock and bushes some yards from the coach, yet not so far away but that she could hear what they said. "I'll swear there was no dead Injin here when we came yesterday! We searched the whole place—by daylight, too—for any sign. The Injin was killed ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... was Ralph Bently who stood behind him, flipping a postal order in his fingers, impatient to have it cashed. They exchanged careless nods, and Alec, sealing his letter, dropped it into the box and hurried back to his work. As the outer door swung shut, Bently leaned his arms on the window ledge and spoke to the clerk, who was an intimate ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... large warehouses, used without exception for the storage of tobacco, a certain one more irregular than the rest. An archway leads into it, and upon the outside of the second story windows runs a long ledge or footway, whereupon sentries used to stride, guarding the miserable people within. This is the jail of Castle Thunder, and it was the civil or State prison of the capital. Ill as were the accommodations of prisoners of war, the treatment ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... best," was the answer; and getting up, we made our way over the rocks in the direction from which Ben's voice proceeded. After passing over a dry ledge we found the water again deepening; but I took Halliday's hand, and together we waded on, followed by Boxall—who was ready to give either of us assistance, should we require it. The water was growing deeper and deeper, till it almost ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... plain enough, supposing You sat there, moon-struck, dozing, Upon the window's edge, Then lost yourself, and falling, Just where we found you, sprawling, Struck the piazza ledge; A lucky hit, old fellow, Of black and blue and yellow It gives your face a touch, You saved your neck, but barely; To state the matter fairly, You took a ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... stand out as distinctly as though seen through plate-glass. Follow in fancy the outpourings of this wonderful basin; seek its future course in Huron, Erie, and Ontario, in that wild leap from the rocky ledge which makes Niagara famous through the world. Seek it farther still, in the quiet loveliness of the Thousand Isles; in the whirl and sweep of the Cedar Rapids; in the silent rush of the great current under the rocks at the foot of Quebec. Ay, and even farther away still, down where ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... eyes were a number of dark yellowish or orange-coloured rings, and the eyes themselves were large, bright, and staring. It displayed no alarm at my presence, but presently swam slowly to the side of the pool and disappeared under the coral ledge. I determined to catch and examine the creature, and in a few minutes I discovered it resting in such a position that I could grasp it with my hand. I did so, and seizing it firmly by the back and belly, whipped it up out of the water, but not before I felt several ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... music under the porch, with its heavy overhanging shield of carved stone, now came to the open window, which, though raised some feet above the terrace walk beneath, was not so high but that his head appeared on a level with the wide ledge ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... every day from ten to fifteen miles north of her reckoning. The day before we had seen several gannets; but upon sounding many times during the day and the next night, we had no ground with 160 fathom. This morning, at seven o'clock, we saw a ledge of breakers bearing S.W. at the distance of about three miles: We hauled off from them, and at eleven saw more breakers bearing S.W. by S. distant about five miles. At noon, we hauled off the east end of them, from which we were not ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... after darkness had fallen over the hills, Johnny went into Mine No. 1 with a flashlight alone. Having reached a point where Langlois had been found dead, he sat down on a frozen ledge and stared at the rust-reddened pick-handle, which seemed to point an accusing finger at him for bringing that fine fellow here to meet his death. What had killed him? This was as much a mystery ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... rough mess table in their popotte—a tiny building stuck away on a ledge of rock under a cliff—they told all about the bombing of the railroad stations and ammunition ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... servants, and, in fact, with everyone, but never did she come upon a clue which promised to lead to a solution of the diamond difficulty. Once she penetrated into a turret room, and came unexpectedly upon the Prince, who was sitting on the window-ledge, looking absently out on the broad and smiling valley that lay for miles below the castle. He sprang to his feet and stared so fiercely at the intruder that the girl's heart failed her, and she had not even the presence of mind to turn ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... with her skinny arm extended, seems to direct their course, utters a wild scream of laughter, while a raven, speeding on broad black wing before them, croaks hoarsely. Now the torrent rages below, and they see its white waters tumbling over a ledge of rock; now they pass over the brow of a hill; now skim over a dreary waste and dangerous morass. Fearful it is to behold those two flying figures, as the lightning shows them, bestriding their fantastical steed; the one an old hag with hideous lineaments ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... they encountered a fearful storm and had need of all their faith. The wind blew furiously for thirty-six hours. The captain ordered the masts cut away and the decks cleared. He remained on deck, calmly giving orders, until they were driven almost upon a ledge of rocks. Despairing of any safety in the ship, he abandoned her, taking his children with him in a small boat. Some of those left on board the ship, in their agony of peril, were in the cabin, beseeching the mercy of Him who rules the violent sea. ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... remember that I had taken up the study of plants with a good deal of enthusiasm, and that while hunting for some variety in the mountains I sat down to rest on the edge of a ravine. Perhaps it was on the ledge of an overhanging rock; anyhow, if I remember rightly, the ground gave way all about me, precipitating me below. The fall was a very considerable one—probably thirty or forty feet, or more, and I was rendered unconscious. ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... and the earth flew about, and we were laughing, because we had an idea that among all those bullets there was not one that would find its billet. And then they stopped firing, and we came back to sit on the ledge. There were Chagniol and Duc and I, and I had them both to the right of me. We began to talk about Giromagny, and about Danjoutin, because that's the district we all came from, and this went on ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... O leaf! whom to expect Even, hath pleas'd me:" thus the prompt reply Prefacing, next it added; "he, of whom Thy kindred appellation comes, and who, These hundred years and more, on its first ledge Hath circuited the mountain, was my son And thy great grandsire. Well befits, his long Endurance should be ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the rocks showed just ahead and there was a mad race to see which boy should arrive at the spot first. It was a steep ascent, but just in front of the cave was a flat ledge of rocks some ten or fifteen feet wide which made a ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... to my ear and rested the other end upon a ledge of mud. The effect was like some one speaking through a telephone. I could distinctly hear the impact of the pickaxe wielded by the Bosche upon the clay and chalk, and the falling ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... all sense of petty annoyance dropped from me. I walked forwards with a grateful sense of relief and took my seat on a projecting ledge of one of the roofs and let my eyes wander over the maze of dim outlines ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... each other of the holes by which I could gain any footing for my ascent, increased the difficulty. I gained, however, nearly a quarter of the height, but I could climb no further and then found myself on a ledge where it was possible to sit down - and I have rarely found a little repose more seasonable. But it was not more sweet than short : for in a few minutes a sudden gust of wind raised the waves to a frightful height, whence ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... country, and it is likely that the portrait of the kindly professor might have been recognized there. Ward's Tavern serves for the public-house where the various characters congregate, and there is a high rocky ledge in the woods, or what used to be woods at Brunswick, where the students often tried their skill in climbing, and which Hawthorne has idealized into the cliff where the would-be abductor met his timely ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... as he chose. He also knew how to empty out seas and remove mountains from one place to another. So he went to the Wu-I hills and rescued his mother, whom he took on his back and carried away. They stopped to rest on a flat ledge ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... inwards, on massive hinges. On the side of this frame, opposite the hinges, was a strong clamp and screw, by means of which the frame could be screwed up very tight, in order to exclude the water in case of heavy seas. The tables were fitted with a ledge all around the outside, to keep the dishes from sliding off. Above each table, and suspended from the ceiling, was a long shelf of beautiful wood, with racks and sockets in it of every kind, for containing wineglasses, ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... left, on a narrow ledge surmounted by a natural wall, similar to that we had scaled. This wall and the shelf beneath it, jutted out at one point so as to conceal all beyond it; when Basil reached the spot, he looked stealthily round the angle of the rock, drew back sharply, shouldered his gun, and signed ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... ledge which ran round the hollow were children tugging at a goat. Opposite was a contadino's house of gray stone. A water-wheel turned beside it, and a stream, brought down from the hills, ran chattering past, a white and dancing thread of water. Everything was very still and soft. The children ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... brethren, looking upon all the evil that is around us, and conscious in some measure of the weakness of our own hearts, let us do as a man would do who stands upon the narrow ledge of a cliff, and look sheer down into the depth below, and feels his head begin to reel and turn giddy; let us lay hold of the Guide's hand, and if we cleave by Him, He will hold up our goings that our footsteps slip not. Nothing else will. No length of obedient service is any guarantee against ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... this dangerous traffic, and perform acts of daring, which are quite startling. It is told of one, a young girl of Eshiarce, that, being hard pressed by a party of excise, she ran along a steep ledge of rocks, and, at a fearful height, cast herself into the Nive: no one dared to follow down the ravine; and they saw her swimming for her life, battling with the roaring torrent; she reached the opposite shore, turned with an exulting gesture, although her basket ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... "Will you give me your word," said the Earl, "that you will think no more of Miss Effingham?" Phineas stood silent, considering how he might answer this proposal, resolving that nothing should bring him to such a pledge as that suggested while there was yet a ledge for hope to stand on. "Say that, Mr. Finn, and I will ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Rotas is over the dry hills of limestone, covered with a scrubby brushwood, to a crest where are the first rude and ruined defences. The limestone is succeeded by the sandstone cliff cut into steps, which led from ledge to ledge and gap to gap, well guarded with walls and an archway of solid masonry. Through this we passed on to the flat summit of the Kymore hills, covered with grass and forest, intersected by paths in all directions. The ascent is about 1200 feet—a long pull in the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... this, I walked out of the cabin and left him. He cried out, "Don't leave me;" but I heeded him not, and sat down at the edge of the flat ledge of the rock before the cabin. Looking at the white dancing waves, and deep in my own thoughts, I considered a long while how I should behave towards him. I did not wish him to die, as I knew he must if I left him. He could not obtain water from the rill without a great chance of falling over ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... impracticability of escape that the only place which I glanced at twice was the western side, that is the one away from the hill. Here it sloped gradually for a few feet. I took off my shoes and went down to the edge. Below, some ten feet, was a ledge, on to which with care I could get down, but below that was a sheer fall of some fifty feet. As a means of escape it was hopeless, but it struck me that if an attack was made I might slip away and get on to the ledge. Once there I could not be seen except by ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... after peril pass'd in haste, We saw, from our rock-shelter'd vantage ledge, In the white ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... this overhanging ledge of rock to shelter us, compared with the mercy of the Lord ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt
... place. The water was a little higher when we came through in the rain; but we ran these rapids, and don't you remember, half way down that steepest part, we thought we were going to hit a sunken ledge—just to the right of the ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... Irish cottage with its thatched roof, its peat fire, and well-swept hearth; the table with the white cloth, the cat in the rocking chair, the curtain starched stiffly at the window, the bright posy on the deep window ledge; and, lastly, the little girl with clean pinafore and curly hair who kissed her mother every morning and trotted off to school. But that was before the father died, and the potatoes failed. The school days were soon over, and the ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... on the marble ledge. Orsino laid his own upon it, and both trembled a little. She understood more than any word could ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... and promptly obeyed, and the vessel came round in time to escape destruction on a ledge of rocks, over which the water ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... here and one of its occupants was never seen alive again. As one paddles out into the pool and is drawn into the dark current moving silently and swiftly to the rapid the heart certainly beats a little faster. The water's surface is an inclined plane as it flows over the ledge of rock. Straight ahead the current breaks on a huge black rock in a cloud of white foam. One must sweep off to the right, with the great volume of the water, and need catch only a little spray in swinging safely past the danger point. Then, in the waves caused by the current, ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... done. In trying to skirt the hazels, he had stepped over the cliff-edge, and had dropped five feet or more to a rather narrow ledge that juts out ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... plant, With many a flower distilling fragrant dew From brightly coloured petals. Almond trees Give snowy promise of sweet leaves and fruit; Here all the scented tangle of the South Covers the boulders, calcined by the sun To pearly whiteness; thorn or asphodel Sprout from each cranny of the topmost ledge To nod against the deep blue sky, or peer Into the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Mine Host sprang ashore—another burly six-foot bushman—and greeted us with a flashing smile and a laughing "There's not much of her left." And then, stepping with quiet unconcern into over two feet of water, pushed the boat against a jutting ledge for my convenience. "Wet feet don't count," he laughed with another of his flashing smiles, when remonstrated with, and Mac chuckled in an aside, "Didn't I tell you a woman ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... or three months father had by hard toil earned money sufficient to send for us. I remember very well that journey over the mountains covered with snow into the State of Vermont, and our establishment in what was called the 'small house by the ledge' in the little neighborhood of houses clustering on and about the ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... hour's ride, we reached the foot of a tall Table-mountain called Kondura, where our road, a goat-path rough with rocks or fallen trees, and here and there arched over with giant creepers, was reduced to a narrow ledge, with a forest above and a forest below. I could not but admire the beauty of this Valombrosa, which reminded me of scenes whilome enjoyed in fair Touraine. High up on our left rose the perpendicular ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... care was to find the cave that was to shelter him. He spent the day in climbing very carefully and lightly all over the face of the rock. Never had he known his hand so strong, or his head so sure. He sate for a time on a little ledge, to which he had climbed on the crag face, and he feasted his eyes upon the sight of the great cliffs of the mainland that ran opposite him, to left and right, in a wide half-circle. His eyes dwelt with pleasure upon the high sloping shoulders of rock, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... below a hillside farmstead some distance from our village, is a broad, deep salmon-pool, fringed with alders and willows. Right across the upper end of this pool stretches a broken ledge of rock, over which, in flood, the waters boom and crash into a seething basin whence thin lines of vapour—blue and grey when the day is dull, or gleaming with the colours of the rainbow when the sun, unclouded, shines aslant the fall—ceaselessly arise, and quiver on the waves of ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... torn in the side at this place the vessel would quickly take in water and sink. On this account the armor is made thick and is known as the water-line belt. At the point where the protective deck and the ship's side meet, there is a projection or ledge on which this armor belt rests. Thus it goes down about three feet below the water and it extends to ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... the rear guard having caught up with Greene's division, which was in the worst plight of all, encamped at a place called Ledge Falls. At a council of war held in the midst of a driving snowstorm, Enos himself voted at first to go forward; but afterwards he decided to go back. So the rear guard, grudgingly giving up two barrels of ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... clock and saw that it had stopped. I went up to it, and took it from the nail. I saw it wanted but very little to make it go again. I therefore quietly, but without taking notice of my companions, set to work to take off the face and do the needful repairs. A pair of pincers on the window-ledge and some iron wire, in fact, an old skewer, were all the tools necessary; and very soon, to the satisfaction of my host, his wife, and his fair daughter, the clock was set going as well as it ever had done. The farmer slapped me on the back and gave me great encouragement. I then cast my eyes ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... that empty car. Considering the fact that it was night, that the train was bucking furiously over the old roadbed, Lefty had a not altogether simple task before him. But he managed it with the same apelike adroitness. He could climb with his feet as well as his hands. He would trust a ledge as well as he would trust ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... vases spilt over it, or wet teacups and saucers put down on it. The small screens now so fashionable make another admirable place for mounting Breton work. These screens are made of two compartments only, in height about 41/2 feet. To each panel, 21/2 feet from the ground, a ledge that can be put up or down is fixed, and that is used for holding a book or a teacup. The panel below this ledge is merely filled with a little curtain made of coloured Oriental silk, and arranged in very full folds. The panel ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... her fingers on the window ledge. The action announced plainly that she had finished with the situation. Mildred put her hand on the knob, pulled the ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... at the window. Slyly he raised the sash and scooped up a big handful of snow from the broad ledge outside. Andy was nearby, bending over, lacing ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... Claggett Chew's oaths and exclamations became fainter as the spicy scent grew stronger, and at last his mutterings trailed off into snorts and, finally, snores. The monkey, clutching the paper to itself, sat on the window ledge stuffing it into the pouch about its neck, and a monkey smile flitted across its face as it heard a final ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... happened. Strange, at least, it seemed to him; but he understood it afterwards. The ship was really resting upon a ledge of the rock on which she had struck: there was little to be seen in the darkness except a white line of breakers and a mass of something beyond—was it land? The ship gave a sudden outward lurch. There ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of you, and take the painter with you, my men," said the mate, when the boat stuck about six feet from the top of the ledge. ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... to me as if she struck all over," Stephen said, "and I should think she is on a flat ledge of rock. I don't think that the wind is blowing as hard as it was when we lay down. There are some stars shining. At any rate we may as well go in again and wait. We should only be swept overboard if we ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... nasty night," said Uncle Terry, coming in from the shed and dumping an armful of wood in the box behind the kitchen stove, "an' the combers is just a-humpin' over White Hoss Ledge, an' the spray's flyin' half way ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... in diameter and too thick to be cut with the bolt-clippers, but Okada did not despair. With the tool he grasped the adobe window-ledge and bit deeply into it. Piece after piece of the ancient adobe came away, until presently the bases of the iron bars lay exposed; whereupon Okada seized them, one by one, in his hands and bent them upward and outward, backward and forward, until ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... The sheep on this side of the ledge had seen him and were flying. Just as I reached the brow of the hill, he was creeping round the end of the ledge below, ready to spring upon a ewe that was feeding near. The first thing he knew a stone from my sling hit him, and he went howling down the hill. I think I broke his leg, ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... the discussion after an old fashion of the Sloman cottage, "not until we two walk together to the Ledge to-morrow, my little ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... always called it—was much more sensibly his own than any domiciliary quatrieme, looking upon a court, with the rent overdue. Felix had spent a good deal of his life in looking into courts, with a perhaps slightly tattered pair of elbows resting upon the ledge of a high-perched window, and the thin smoke of a cigarette rising into an atmosphere in which street-cries died away and the vibration of chimes from ancient belfries became sensible. He had never known anything so infinitely rural as these New England ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... there's a ledge at the edge of the roof, and your heels catch that, and that stops you. You CAN'T go ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... Great Book. Though it was secured by Little Guardian locks and fortified with the Scarem Buzz alarm, he did not feel sure of it. He decided to sleep there that night with his .45-caliber Sure-shot revolver. Let them come again; he'd give 'em a lesson! On second thought, he rebaited the window-ledge with a can of Special Juicy Apricot Preserve. At ten o'clock he turned in, determined to sleep lightly, and immediately plunged into fathomless depths of unconsciousness, lulled by a singing wind and the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... it was over, and I was left alone to my painting, I selected a subject in which, for the first time, I introduced a dramatic element. I supposed that a hunter and a buck had had a hand-to-horn fight, and, during it, had fallen together over a ledge of rocks, at the bottom of which both lay dead. A perpendicular ledge of granite, about twenty feet high, mosses and ferns clinging in its crevices, overhanging a level space covered with a heavy growth of luxuriant fern, furnished the background. There I laid the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... remembered, was open at the bottom—an inch or two, no more. The man slipped the end of his stick under the sash and prised it up quietly. Next he raised himself on tiptoe, and thrust the stick a foot or so through the opening; worked it slowly along the window-ledge, and hesitated; then pulled with a light jerk, as an angler strikes a fish. And Hester, holding her breath, saw the stick withdrawn, inch by inch; and at the end of it a ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... long distance there was no spot of level ground where our travellers could have encamped, even had they desired to stop. At length, however, the path led out of the torrent-bed, and they found themselves on a small ledge, or table, covered with low trees. These trees were of a peculiar kind, very common in all parts of the Andes, and known as molle trees. They are more properly bushes than trees, being only about ten or twelve feet ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... had been holding my pistol out of his sight below the window-ledge, but on this I swung it up ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... and down the sidewalk talking excitedly, but Sam was a figure in the town's life and his right to push in among the men was not questioned. He squirmed through the mass of legs and secured a seat in a window ledge where he could watch the men ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... and with my left hand seize hold of the window-sill. In this moment of approaching success, I feel my heart beating wildly. I put my revolver between my teeth. A quick spring, and I shall be on the window-ledge. But—the ladder! I had been obliged to press on it heavily, and my foot had scarcely left it, when I felt it swaying beneath me. It grated on the wall and fell. But, already, my knees were touching the window-sill, ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... not walking, but tottering upward; the Dogs behind in line, were now doing a little better, were nearing him. We could hear them gasping; we scarcely heard them bay—they had no breath for that; upward the grim procession went, circling a spur of the Butte and along a ledge that climbed and narrowed, then dropped for a few yards to a shelf that reared above the canyon. The foremost Dogs were closing, fearless of a foe ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... duties in good working order for the day. Very subdued, the three allowed themselves to be dressed and washed by the Child, who even laced the boys' boots, having found through experience that if left to themselves they hopped about for at least five minutes to find a comfortable ledge for their foot, and then spat on their hands and broke ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... and surveyed the scene before and below with the eye of a poet and a painter. Insensibly, while listening to the bandit, he had wound up a considerable ascent, and now he was upon a broad ledge of rock covered with mosses and dwarf shrubs. Between this eminence and another of equal height, upon which the castle was built, there was a deep but narrow fissure, overgrown with the most profuse foliage, so that the eye could not penetrate many yards ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to be filled, blew on it, sipped, and then hunted on the ledge under the desk for the butt of the cigar he had ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... control of his diaphragm, as a falling man clings to a ledge of rock. His great chest muscles gave convulsive jerks. His ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... the window and flung up the sash. Seated astride the ledge, he looked back at her with a smile which seemed to say, "At last we are friends!" The next moment he had reached out a hand, caught hold of the One-and-All's forestay, and swung himself out into ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... World's End, at the furthest end of Last Street, there is a hole that you take to be a well, close by the garden wall, but that if you lower yourself by your hands over the edge of the hole, and feel about with your feet till they find a ledge, that is the top step of a flight of stairs that takes you down over the edge of the World. "For all that men know, those stairs may have a purpose and even a bottom step," said the arch-idolater, "but discussion about the lower flights is idle." ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... Ellen began to grow weary. The lane went on towards the north; the path rather led off towards the southern edge of the mountain, rising all the while; but before she reached that Ellen came to what she thought a good resting-place, where the path opened upon a small level platform or ledge of the hill. The mountain rose steep behind her, and sank very steep immediately before her, leaving a very superb view of the open country from the north-east to the south-east. Carpeted with moss, and furnished with fallen ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... now in a strange state of excitement. The shock of her uncle's death had undoubtedly shaken her whole balance, moral, physical, and mental. The fortnight that had followed it, when she had clung like a man falling from a height and held by a rocky ledge to the one determination not to look either behind or in front of her, had been a strain beyond ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... contracting with horror; while those hands, which she had raised, clasped in each other, toward heaven, dropped in horizontal lines before her, the fingers pointed forward in convulsed motion. Heyward turned the instant she gave a direction to his suspicions, and peering just above the ledge which formed the threshold of the open outlet of the cavern, he beheld the malignant, fierce and savage features ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... sinking sun from that time glorified the Sierras, and as the dew fell, aromatic odors made the still air sweet. On a single track, sometimes carried on a narrow ledge excavated from the mountain side by men lowered from the top in baskets, overhanging ravines from 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep, the monster train SNAKED its way upwards, stopping sometimes in front of a few ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... at this point interrupted by a ledge of rock, which extends across its whole breadth. In forcing a passage for itself through this barrier, it is divided into several channels, which form as many beautiful cascades as they fall into the extensive basin that receives them below. ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... eve they sat over the stove, after the little ones had gone to bed, and discussed the situation. The wind hurled itself against the house in a very frenzy of rage, shaking the icicles from the window-ledge and hissing through the patched panes. The snow that sifted in through the loose sash lay unmelted on the sill. Jim had a piece of old carpet about him, and coughed with almost every breath. Mrs. Wiggs's head was in her hands, and the tears that trickled ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... in the cellar of the farm-house, but mischievously contrived to set all the taps of the cider-barrels running, before he was released. These excursions led us often to the Devil's Den, an excavation in an abandoned ledge of limestone, in a solitary situation at some distance from the town, and guarded, now as then, by three rather spectral-looking Lombardy poplars, which to us boys had a sort of mystic and undefined significance. Here we procured bits of serpentine, interspersed ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... in reaching the shore, having lashed themselves to the same spar. It was a desert, sandy coast, and they were almost starved after having reached the land; their only shelter was a small cave in a low ledge of rocks near the beach; they fed upon half-putrid shell-fish thrown upon the sands by the gale, and they drank from the pools of rain-water that had formed on the rock during the storm; for they had saved nothing from the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... scions of wealthy progenitors had come to the Northland in search of laurels, with much money to burn, and a 'man' apiece. Luckily for their souls, the other two men were up the White River in search of a mythical quartz-ledge; so Sandy had to grin under the responsibility of three healthy masters, each of whom was possessed of peculiar cookery ideas. Twice that morning had a disruption of the whole camp been imminent, only averted by immense concessions from one ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... of an elevated ledge of rock on the western side of the city of Salem, broken at intervals; beginning at Legg's Hill, and trending northerly. The turnpike from Boston enters Salem through one of the gaps in this ridge, which has ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Keep it in the sunshine on thy window-ledge, and when summer is over 't will be white as snow. Leave it in a snowbank, or in a cellar under wet moss, and 't will turn again to rose-color. This I have seen. In the winter nights the Frost King hangs his ice-diamonds ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey |
