"Sabre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... charge—1st, in columns; 2d, in line; and 3d, in route, or at random, (a la deban-dade.) These may also be varied by charging either at a trot or a gallop. All these modes have been employed with success. In a regular charge in line the lance offers great advantages; in the melee the sabre is the best weapon; hence some military writers have proposed arming the front rank with lances, and the second with sabres, The pistol and the carabine are useless in the charge, but may sometimes be employed with advantage against convoys, outposts, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... was slipping, going down, helmet awry. The other, a giant, muscular Yill, spun away, whirled in a mad skirl of pipes as coins showered—then froze before a gaudy table, raised the sabre and slammed it down in a resounding blow across the gay cloth before a lace and bow-bedecked Yill in the same instant that the ...
— The Yillian Way • John Keith Laumer
... of Gorodnitchy. One of Anton's favourite improvisations was a scene in which the Governor of the town attended church parade at a festival and stood in the centre of the church, on a rug surrounded by foreign consuls. Anton, dressed in his high-school uniform, with his grandfather's old sabre coming to his shoulder, used to act the part of the Governor with extraordinary subtlety and carry out a review of imaginary Cossacks. Often the children would gather round their mother or their old ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... certain land, and in this land the hare saw a spring, and close to the spring grew an apple-tree with the apples of youth, and this spring and this apple-tree were guarded by a Muscovite, oh! so strong, so strong, and he waved his sabre again and again so that not even a mouse could make its way up to that well. What was to be done? Then the little hare had resort to subtlety, and made herself crooked, and limped toward the spring ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... holy fire that burned in me; No gnawing care was thus beguiled. My children clustered at my knee; Upon my braided soldier's coat My wife looked,—ah, so wearily!— It made her tender blue eyes float. And when my wheeling rowels rang, Or on the floor my sabre smote, The sound went through her like a pang. I saw this; and the days to come Forewarned me with an iron clang, That drowned the music of the drum, That made the rousing bugle faint; And yet I sternly left my home,— Haply to fall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... right. Yet even while they crouch to the tyrant's sabre, how bitterly they need release! even while they crucify their teachers and their saviours, how little they know what they do! They may forsake themselves; but they should ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... father before him, in which his grandfathers and great-grandfathers had lived and died. Careless of repose for his tired and aged body, he has not undressed, but motioning off his attendants with impatient gesture, ungirding his sabre, and throwing off the chain of gold to which the royal medal was attached, his head sinks weariedly and sadly upon the oaken table before him. Beyond the bedstead, a gothic archway vaults through the wall into his private chapel, the antique lamp of gold still burns upon its altar. He turns not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the foolish reign Of wrath which sundered trivial ties. A soldier's sabre vainly tries ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... coming cheerily to close quarters with them. They wore linen cuirasses reaching to the groin, and instead of the ordinary "wings" or basques, a thickly-plaited fringe of cords. They were also provided with greaves and helmets, and at the girdle a short sabre, about as long as the Laconian dagger, with which they cut the throats of those they mastered, and after severing the head from the trunk they would march along carrying it, singing and dancing, when they drew ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... like the rest of us, but they are quicker than most men to recognize logic. The man with crimson pants and sabre grinned cynically, shrugged his shoulders, and passed on to ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... and powerfully built man of about fifty, with an enormous beard of grizzly brown and grey hair, meeting above and beneath his nether lip; his eyebrows were heavy and beetling, and nearly concealed his sharp grey eyes, while a deep sabre-wound had left upon his cheek a long white scar, giving a most warlike and ferocious look to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... 11th September [or 11th and 21st together], the afflicted Lady makes an appearance there, which, for theatrical reality, has become very celebrated. Alas, it is but three months since she galloped to the top of the Konigsberg, and cut defiantly with bright sabre towards the Four Points of the Universe; and already it has come to this. Hungarian Magnates in high session, the high Queen enters, beautiful and sad,—and among her Ministers is noticeable a Nurse with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... war and love some poets sing, And some of fame and glory, But few there are a tribute bring To him whose only story Is written on the sterile soil With hand of honest labor, Whose plow and hoe bespeak a toil More grand than gory sabre. ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... performed by the Nepaulese by cutting off a buffalo's head at one blow of a sabre or tulwal. The blade of this weapon is peculiar, being concave, and the extremity is far heavier than the hilt; the animal's neck is tied down to a post, so as to produce a tension on the muscles, without which the blow, however ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... don't sit well on your stummuk! Or, it may be, the klimat o' this hyar destrict. Sartin it do feel a leetle dampish, 'count o' the river fog; tho', as a general thing, the San Sabre bottom air 'counted one o' the healthiest spots in Texas. S'pose ye take a pull out o' this ole gourd o' myen. It's the best Monongaheely, an' for a seedimentary o' the narves thar ain't it's eequal to be foun' in any drug-shop. I'll bet my bottom dollar ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... guns in dreadful chorus rang— And on this plain was heard that day the glittering sabre's clang, And in that vale, where wound the brook, with waters murmuring, We stood and heard the Minie balls their deadly message sing, And saw the life blood, gushing red, from stricken comrade near, Whose gentle ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... he added, grinding his teeth, "is that I am perhaps viler and more loathsome than the louse I killed, and I felt beforehand that I should tell myself so after killing her. Can anything be compared with the horror of that? The vulgarity! The abjectness! I understand the 'prophet' with his sabre, on his steed: Allah commands and 'trembling' creation must obey! The 'prophet' is right, he is right when he sets a battery across the street and blows up the innocent and the guilty without deigning to explain! It's for you to obey, trembling creation, and not to have desires, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... sees is a janissary maliciously aiming his axe at the marble pavement. The Sultan goes up to him and asks, "Why?" "In the cause of the faith," answers the soldier. Then the Sultan draws his sabre, and, cutting the man down, exclaims, "Dogs, have you not loot enough? The buildings of the city are my property." And, kicking the dying man aside, he ascends a Christian pulpit, and in a thundering voice dedicates the Church of the Holy Wisdom ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the loan of your coat." If the venerable elder brother charitably complies, the matter ends with: "Thanks, brother!" but otherwise, the request is forthwith emphasised with the arguments of a cudgel; and if these do not convince, recourse is had to the sabre.' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... bravery was performed, unsurpassed, perhaps, by any act of personal daring during the whole war! A tremendous negro, a fine, manly fellow, named Dave, belonging to Capt. Walker, with whom he was brought up—boys together—being mounted, and armed with a heavy sabre, dashed forward down a narrow street, (up which, a detached body of lancers were striving to escape,) and throwing himself between three poised lances and the person of Dr. Lamar, one of the surgeons, who would have been most inevitably torn ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... minutes the change was complete, and I do not believe that my best friend would have recognized me in the close-fitting dress, cut like that of a Prussian dragoon's parade uniform, but made of dark cloth with red facings. I buckled on the sabre, and Gregorios set the fez carefully on my head. I looked at myself in the glass. The costume fitted as though it were made ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... his Major and regimental commander, the genial and gallant Gahogan, slumbering in a peace like that of the just. He stretched himself anear, put out his hand to touch his sabre and revolver, drew his caped greatcoat over him, moved once to free his back of a root or pebble, glanced languidly at a single struggling star, thought for an instant of his far-away mother, turned his head with a sigh and slept. In the morning he was to ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... am young, it is true, but I neither fear the powers of earth, nor of air," and sternly added, "will you let me ascend?" The aeronaut, a little offended at his obtrusion, sharply replied, "No, Sir, I will not; I beg that you will retire." Upon which the little enraged officer, drew a small sabre, which he wore with his uniform, instantly cut the balloon in several places, and destroyed the curious apparatus, which the aeronaut had constructed, with infinite labour and ingenuity, for the purpose of trying the possibility ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... are you?" said Corentin who had run up the stairs and found the gendarme with his head bandaged, and lying on Madame Michu's bed; his hat, sabre, and ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... edge of the battle two men had forgotten the Aztec Eagle and the Stars and Stripes; they fought for love of a woman. Neither had had time to draw his pistol; they fought with lance and sabre, thrusting and parrying. Both were skilful swordsmen, but Altimira's horse was far superior to Russell's, and he ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... Arabs to discharge a musket during the contest, was taken by them on shore; and after a consultation on his fate, it was determined that he should forfeit the arm by which this act of resistance was committed. It was accordingly severed from his body by one stroke of a sabre, and no steps were taken either to bind up the wound, or to prevent his bleeding to death. The captain, himself, had yet sufficient presence of mind left, however, to think of his own safety, and there being near him ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... wunderbar. Ein Berliner Professor!" And the student with Schmissen (sabre cuts) across his close-cropped head smacked his lips with, satisfaction over the words much as he might have done over his Stein at ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... An officer attached to the 13th Cuirassiers—a regiment with not men enough left after Metz to muster a company—is picked up for dead, with one arm torn off, and a sabre-slash over his head, and brought to her ward. She nurses him back to life, inch by inch, and in six months he joins his regiment. Now please follow the plot. It is quite interesting. Is it not easy to see what will happen? Tender ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... thus we resolve to live: By Heaven we will be free! And ere we cease this battle-cry, Be all our blood, our kindred's spilt, On bayonet or sabre hilt! We will be free or die! Then let the drums all roll! ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... seen two thousand champagne bottles strewn around a chateau from which the invaders had decamped, and the old butler of the house going carefully through the grounds and picking up the bottles which by chance had not been opened. The method of opening champagne, by the way, was a stroke of the sabre on the neck of the bottle. The German manner was also to lay the lighted cigar on the finest table-linen, so that by the burnt holes the proprietors might count their guests. Another officer had seen a whole countryside of villages littered with orchestrions and absinthe- bottles, groundwork ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... a land of freedom. The boy grew up in the rude backwoods settlement, rough, boisterous, unlettered; at the age of fourteen, riding with Sumter in the guerrilla warfare waged throughout the state against the British, and then, captured and wounded on head and hand by a sabre-stroke whose mark he bore till his dying day, a prisoner in the filthy Camden prison-pen, sick of the small-pox, and coming out of it, at ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... along that mountain's slope, a fiery horseman ride; Mark his torn plume, his tarnished belt, the sabre at his side. His spurs are buried rowel-deep, he rides with loosened rein, There's blood upon his charger's flank and foam upon the mane; He speeds him toward the olive-grove, along that shaded hill: God shield the helpless maiden there, if ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... threw a long knife at me out of a sling. Instinctively I caught the weapon as if it had been a ball hot off the bat. In doing so I dropped my sabre and was cut across the fingers. He came at me fiercely, clubbing his gun—a raw-boned, swarthy giant, broad as a barn door. I caught the barrel as it came down. He tried to wrench it away, but I held firmly. Then he began to push ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... me preguntes por que lloro, no me lo preguntes; pues ni yo sabre contestarte, ni tu comprenderme. Hay deseos que se ahogan en nuestra alma de mujer, sin que los revele mas que un suspiro; ideas locas que cruzan por nuestra imaginacion, sin que ose formularlas el labio, fenomenos ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... would not obey and in a moment the huge cat sprang out of the tree directly upon Tom Cameron's faithful companion. Reno was too sharp to be easily caught, however; he leaped aside and the sabre-like claws of the panther missed him. Nor was the dog unwise enough to meet ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... suburbs. But never, without exception, did he go down into the European quarter. This kind of Algiers appeared to him as ugly and unbearable as a barracks at home, with its Zouaves in revelry, its music-halls crammed with officers, and its everlasting clank of metal sabre-sheaths under ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... begun, "yes, my friend, I am as much opposed as you are to a stormy revolution. I left my father's house, I abandoned my patrimony to accompany our princes into exile. I have fought for them, in their holy cause I received a sabre cut on the arm, which every now and then, by a very disagreeable sensation, recalls my youthful patriotism to me. Soon, however, the idle pretensions of my comrades, the disputes of our chiefs, repressed my ardor. I left one of the cohorts in which reason was treated as treachery, and where boasting ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... cross of the Legion of Honor bright, Let it lie near my heart, upon me; Give me my musket in my hand, And gird my sabre on me. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... they showed their scars. There was very little clothing to hide them—bullet wound and sabre stroke. The memory, dark and sad, stood out before us all. It was a moment ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... complete. Captain Turner, whose fair-complected partner had not yet ventured to these destructive suns, sent bedstead and bureau, the latter without knobs, but you could pry the drawers open with the point of a sabre. The post trader drove up from the store with a lot of odds and ends. Even the bachelors were keen to do something. All of which Mrs. Archer most gratefully and smilingly accepted and made mental ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... into the hall where the tyrant and his conclave hearkened to the roar without! Fulfilling the prophecy of Dumas, Henriot, drunk with blood and alcohol, reels within, and chucks his gory sabre on ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sabre and a sabretache," continued the Sergeant. Times were sometimes dull at Fort Blizzard, and the men in the barracks could get a good many laughs out of Kettle ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... humour than yesterday?" Still the princess was silent, and the sultan, perceiving her to be in greater confusion than before, doubted not that something very extraordinary was the cause; but provoked that his daughter should conceal it, he said to her in a rage, with his sabre in his hand: "Daughter, tell me what is the matter, or I will cut ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... the place before he began his operations, to do him justice ; there was then nothing else but mauvaises herbes; now, you must at least allow there is a mixture of flowers and grain! I wish you had seen him yesterday, mowing down our hedge—with his sabre, and with an air and attitudes so military, that, if he had been hewing down other legions than those he encountered—ie., of spiders—he could scarcely have had a mien more tremendous, or have demanded an arm more mighty. Heaven knows, I am "the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... table, littered over with papers black with the accumulation of ancient dust as though they had been smoked, occupied all the space between the two windows; on the walls hung Turkish firearms, whips, a sabre, two maps, some anatomical diagrams, a portrait of Hoffland, a monogram woven in hair in a blackened frame, and a diploma under glass; a leather sofa, torn and worn into hollows in parts, was placed between two huge ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... is,' said Giovanni Severi, resting his hands on the hilt of his sabre, as he sat looking thoughtfully from ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... and heart and wind to travel till she dropped. This mare the little black notary, Shangois, had cheerfully stolen from beside the tent of the English general. The bridle-rein hung upon the wrist of the notary's palsied left hand, and in his right hand he carried the long sabre of an artillery officer, which he had picked up on the battlefield. He rode like a monkey clinging to the back of a hound, his shoulder hunched, his body bent forward even with the mare's neck, his knees gripping the saddle with a frightened ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... still further in our behalf. He introduced us to a Club chiefly composed of French Germans, who were as hospitably inclined as himself. One gentleman invited us to his house, would give us some excellent hock, introduced us to his family, amongst the rest a little fellow with a sabre by his side, with curling locks and countenance and manner interesting as Owen's. Hearing I was fond of pictures and painted glass, he carried me to a fine old Connoisseur, his father-in-law, whose fears and temper were a good ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... If Harry could have no servant, Dan, too, would have none. Dan was crying without shame. Harry's face was as white and stern as his father's. As the horses drew near the General stretched out the sabre in his ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... pointed out, we live to-day in a zoologically impoverished world, from which all the largest, fiercest, and most remarkable animals have lately been weeded out. And it was in all probability the coming on of the Ice Age that did the weeding. Our Zoo can boast no mammoth and no mastodon. The sabre-toothed lion has gone the way of all flesh; the deinotherium and the colossal ruminants of the Pliocene Age no longer browse beside the banks of Seine. But our old master saw the last of some at least among those gigantic quadrupeds; it was his hand ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... had been left there by a soldier of the levee en masse, and placing myself in ambush at the corner of a street, I struck with a blow of this weapon the brigadier placed at the head of the party. The wound was not dangerous; a cut of the sabre, however, was descending to punish my hardihood, when some countrymen came to my aid, and, armed with forks, overturned the five cavaliers from their saddles, and made them prisoners. I was ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... a warm light steal over his face, not realizing how closely his thoughts concerned her own future; she had seen the sabre cut of pain which had followed his thought of the girl and what she might have meant, knowing nothing of that grim tragedy. Now she saw his eyes clear as with their inspired light they were lifted to her. Yet the talk went on uninterruptedly on ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... is possible and the Washington Government shows an honest desire to arrive at an agreement. This is characteristic of the American note. There is no evidence of rattling the sabre, as those who viewed American statesmen and American conditions rightly anticipated. The hopes of our enemies who have already rejoiced at the thought that the Stars and Stripes soon would be floating beside the union jack ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in his carriage; he looked rather bad, and has been suffering a good deal; the doctors seem to doubt whether they will be able to save his arm. I also saw General Hampton, of the cavalry, who has been shot in the hip, and has two sabre-cuts on the head, but he ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... more perilous state. It was always his opinion, that he would probably have lost his life, if his brave and most faithful coxswain, John Sykes, whose name deserves to be coexistent with that of Nelson, had not wilfully interposed his own head to save him from the blow of a Spanish sabre, which this generous man plainly perceived must otherwise prove fatal to his beloved master; and, though the poor fellow thus readily received the diverted stroke, it inflicted on his skull a very dangerous wound, which was for some time thought to ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... is the sabre Nobler than the humble spade? There's a dignity in labour Truer than e'er Pomp arrayed! He who seeks the mind's improvement Aids the world—in aiding mind! Every great, commanding movement ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... or in company with a danseuse, how could they help being friends? If des Lupeaulx had not been a general-secretary he would certainly have been a journalist. Thus, in that fifteen years' struggle in which the harlequin sabre of epigram opened a breach by which insurrection entered the citadel, des Lupeaulx never received so much as ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... swinging reins And clash of spur and sabre, And bugling of battle horn, Six score and eight we rode at morn Six score and eight of Southern born, All tried in ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... centre is 140 degrees. Boomerang is the Port Jackson term for this weapon, and may be retained for want of a more descriptive name. There is a drawing of it by M. Lesueur in Plate 22 Figure 6 of Peron's Atlas; it is there described by the name of sabre a ricochet. This plate may, by the way, be referred to for drawings of the greater number of the weapons used by the Port Jackson natives, all of which, excepting the identical boomerang, are very well delineated. M. Lesueur has however failed ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... was wholly contemptuous of them. The then Lieutenant Jackson rode a horse which was blind in one eye, and he maneuvered to get the bear on the horse's blind side so he could charge it. With his cavalry sabre he split the grizzly's skull down to its chin. It was the only time in history that a grizzly bear was ever killed by a man with a sword. But no grizzly nowadays would attack a man unless cornered. Even cubs with no possible experience of humankind are ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... stands prepared With rifle loaded, sabre bared, And to a questioning world replies, "Who touches ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... or some elements in Germany, seem to have hoped that she could get her own way by bullying and rattling her sabre, and that by these means she could frighten her rivals, make them mutually distrustful, and so break up their combination and deal with them in detail. Those who held this view were the peace-party (so-called), and they included the Kaiser and his Chancellor. They ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... and shun its light, But, prompt to strike the sudden blow, We mount and start with early night, And through the forest track our foe. And soon he hears our chargers leap, The flashing sabre blinds his eyes, And ere he drives away his sleep, And rushes ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... and back teeth or molars. The canines also are long and pointed, very much compressed, and having their lateral margins finely serrated, thus presenting a singular resemblance to the teeth of the extinct "Sabre-toothed Tiger" (Machairodus). The bone of the upper arm (humerus) further shows some remarkable resemblances to the same bone in the Carnivorous Mammals. As has been previously noticed, Professor Owen is of opinion ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... frequently remarked that firearms are of little use to the mounted soldier, and often an incumbrance to man and horse. Cavalry want only one arm—the sabre. Let the men be well mounted and at home in the saddle. It requires great knowledge in a Commander-in-chief to know when and how to use his cavalry. It has been my misfortune to witness oft-repeated blunders in ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... to see who they are. He sees them raise their guns. There is a flash, a rattle and roll. Griffin's and Rickett's men and their horses go down in an instant! They rush on with a yell. There is sharp, hot, decisive work. Close musket-shots and sabre-strokes. Men are ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... shoulders of the huge bear as the latter came down to "all-fours" and dived at the old hunter. Andy sprang back, collided with a tree-trunk, and went head over heels. In an instant the bear would have been upon him and one stroke of his sabre-like claws ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... bosoms, and both the king and they had large bracelets of gold round their arms, wrists, and legs. The women, who were young and well-looking, stared at us with eager astonishment, while the old king scowled upon us so as to freeze our blood. At last, rising from the ground, he took his sabre from the man who held it behind him, and walked up among us, who with our heads bowed, and breathless with fear, awaited our impending fate. I happened to be standing the foremost, and grasping my arm with a gripe which made my heart sink, with his hand which held the sword he bent ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... western wave: Now, my brave lads, fetch us water, after supping let us lave; O Lamprakes, O my nephew, down beside thy uncle sit— When I'm gone, wear thou my trappings, and be captain, as is fit; And do ye, my merry fellows, now my vacant sabre take, And therewith green branches cutting, straight for me a pallet make; Some one for the holy father, that I may confess me, run, And that I to him may whisper all the crimes, in life I've done; I've full thirty years as warrior, twenty five as robber pass'd; Now ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... cavalry carbine, the "Krag," a splendid weapon, and the revolver. A few carried their favorite Winchesters, using, of course, the new model, which took the Government cartridge. We felt very strongly that it would be worse than a waste of time to try to train our men to use the sabre—a weapon utterly alien to them; but with the rifle and revolver they were already thoroughly familiar. Many of my cavalry friends in the past had insisted to me that the revolver was a better weapon than the sword—among them Basil Duke, ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... Syrian ward, thought proper to display some apprehension. These two are on bad terms; children never meet without exchanging volleys of stones, and men fight furiously with quarter-staves. Sometimes, despite the terrors of religion, the knife and sabre are drawn. But these hostilities have their code. If a citizen be killed, there is a subscription for blood-money. An inhabitant of one quarter, passing singly through another, becomes a guest; once ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... a last of sixteen, was in the Landwehr, under the noble Blucher in Silesia, when they drove the French into the Katzbach and the Neisse, swollen by the rains into torrents. It had rained until the forests were marshes. Powder would not burn. But Blucher, ah, there was a man! He whipped his great sabre from under his cloak, crying 'Vorwarts! Vorwarts!' And the Landwehr with one great shout slew their enemies with the butts of their muskets until their arms were weary and the bodies were tossed like logs in the foaming waters. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in their waistcoats in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the platform rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he could hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his helmet, that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant, the youngest son of Monsieur Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on his ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... which he called the "History of Napoleon Bonaparte," in which he plays the sycophant to all the legitimate crowned heads in Europe, whatever their crimes, vices, or miserable imbecilities, he, in his abhorrence of everything low which by its own vigour makes itself illustrious, calls Murat of the sabre the son of a pastry-cook, of a Marseilleise pastry-cook. It is a pity that people who give themselves hoity-toity airs—and the Scotch in general are wonderfully addicted to giving themselves hoity-toity airs, and checking people better than ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... as every man threw his right arm over the reins to seize the hilt of his sabre, and the feeling of wild excitement began to rush through me again as I gripped my own and waited for the order ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... pay, and he, at the head of his gang of armed followers, attacked, plundered, and burnt down the village, and killed his, Teekaram's, brother Girdharee, with his two sons, and inflicted three severe cuts of a sabre on the right arm of his wife, who is now a widow among them. Hindoo Sing's object was to make this village a permanent addition to his estate; but, to his surprise, the Durbar took serious notice of the outrage, and he ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... rations for the front, burned over three hundred wagons, and killed a large number of animals. Colonel E. M. McCook with his cavalry division, moving rapidly from Bridgeport, overtook Wheeler on the 2d, and drove him with great loss in a sabre charge from the trains, recapturing some eight hundred mules. After this Wheeler was driven from Shelbyville on the 6th by Mitchell's cavalry, and on the 8th from Farmington by Crook, and from here he re-crossed the Tennessee with ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... it Gor had said of legends that told of ancestors coming from the outer world? Rawson knew that he was looking at priceless relics of the tribe, at the tusks of man's long extinct enemy, the great sabre-toothed tiger. ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... spinet covered with faded roses; some gilt Spanish leather had got up on the wall and laughed; a Dresden mirror was tripping about, crowned with flowers, and a Japanese bonze was riding along on a griffin; a slim Venetian rapier had come to blows with a stout Ferrara sabre, all about a little pale-faced chit of a damsel in white Nymphenburg china; and a portly Franconian pitcher in gres gris was calling aloud, "Oh, these Italians! always at feud!" But nobody listened to him at all. A great number of little Dresden cups and saucers ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... whose life she had saved. "If you ever want a sabre to deal some special blow, my life is yours. I am good for that. My name is Jean Falcon, otherwise called Beau-Pied, sergeant of the first company of Hulot's veterans, seventy-second half-brigade, nicknamed 'Les Mayencais.' Excuse ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... contused wounds of the arm and shoulder, happening by pike, bayonet, sabre, bullet, mace, or arrow, on the outer aspect of the limb, are (provided the weapon has not broken the bones) less likely to implicate the great arteries, veins, and nerves. These instruments encountering the inner or axillary aspect of the ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... that sort of talk," Keaveney said. "I hear too much of this mailed-fist-and-rattling-sabre stuff from some of the junior officers here, without your giving countenance and encouragement to it. We're here to earn dividends for the stockholders of the Ullr Company, and we can only do that by gaining the friendship, respect ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... sailor language, such as "damn your eyes," etc. In a moment or two the captain, who was an excitable little man, dying with consumption, and not weighing much over a hundred pounds, came running out, carrying a sabre nearly as large and as heavy as he was, and crying, that his men had mutinied. It was necessary to sustain the captain without question, and in a few minutes all the sailors charged with mutiny were in irons. I rather felt for a time a wish that I had not gone aboard just then. As ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... come panting up at the sight of the struggle, and, bringing to bear his old cavalry officer's skill, delivered three slashing sabre cuts with his heavy cane, the first from the right, the second from the left shoulder, putting the enemy thoroughly to rout. For the man left the trophies of the fight in the boys' hands, made for the road, and disappeared over ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... shivered, though the day was warm. There were pleasanter prints inside. In one, Napoleon with sternly folded arms gazed down at a sleeping sentry. In another he reviewed troops at Fontainebleau, and again, from an eminence, he overlooked a spirited battle, directing it with a masterly wave of his sabre. These things were a little disconcerting to one in whom the blood-lust had diminished. He was better pleased with a steel engraving of the coronation, and this he secured for a trifle. It was a thing to nourish an ailing ego, a scene to draw sustenance from when ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... walls, an unusually well-selected library, although a small one, was in a bookcase, while upon the table lay several of the best magazines and reviews of the period. Above the mantel was suspended a cavalry sabre, its scabbard so dented as to suggest that it had seen much and severe service. Young Clancy's eyes were fixed upon it, and his revery was so deep that a book fell from his hand to the floor without his notice. His thoughts, however, were dwelling upon a young girl. Strange that ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... wish to learn all in this beautiful starry night? The conquests of thousands of years, the results of profound studies, you ask for as for toys. To speak of battles, to call to arms, is by no means the same thing as to sabre one's fellow, one's brother, with icy heart and bloodstained hand. Don't you understand, sly little thing, of what arms I speak, of the golden weapons of the spirit, eloquence, the love of humanity, the effort to raise ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... maze on a break-neck bicycle, or where a dull-faced coolie pulled at an overloaded barrow. Grey and brown, the crowd clattered by on their wooden shoes. Grey and black, passed the haikara young men with their yellow side-spring shoes. Black and sabre-dragging, the policeman went to and fro, invisibly moored to his ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... room. "Look to yourself, Contarino," thought I; "if you are found here, you will be hanged for company," and I drew my sword and made a plunge at Flodoardo; but, however well intended, my thrust was foiled by his sabre, which he whirled around with the rapidity of lightning. I fought like a madman, but all my skill was without effect on this occasion, and before I was aware of it, Flodoardo ripped open my bosom. I felt myself wounded, and sprang back. At that moment two pistols were fired, and ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... this thought of a scientific journey that it presents itself under a thousand forms, and all that I undertake looks toward one end. I have for six months frequented a blacksmith's and carpenter's shop, learning to handle hammer and axe, and I also practice arms, the bayonet and sabre exercise. I am strong and robust, know how to swim, and do not fear forced marches. I have, when botanizing and geologizing, walked my twelve or fifteen leagues a day for eight days in succession, carrying on my back a heavy bag loaded with plants or minerals. In one word, I seem to ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... golden fruit, the foliage of which resembles a trophy of savage sabre blades! They are called pineapples, and are the pippins of ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... very well, and my servant standing at a respectful distance, holding my sabre while I was under this temporary cloud. The gallant commander of the "Irish Brigade," as we called Company "H," shared the cloud with me; for he was placed in arrest at the same time. Our sabres, ...
— History of the Second Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry: Beverly Ford. • Daniel Oakey
... wide, and revealed to Leothric the ranks of his sabre teeth, and his leather gums flapped upwards. But while Leothric made to smite at his head, he shot forward scorpion-wise over his head the length of his armoured tail. All this the eye perceived in the hilt of Sacnoth, who smote suddenly sideways. Not with ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... cunning trick, His sabre sometimes he'd employ - No bar of lead, however thick, Had terrors for the ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... only four lines lower down, he remarks plaintively:—"Foreign, and especially French, diplomacy is now industriously spreading the calumny that the German Government and the German people are given to rattling the sabre, and that we want to use for aggressive ends the increased armament which has been forced upon us." Is it mere hostile prejudice to hold that his own poetical selections give a certain colour ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... we were all in the ambulances, thought they could stop the way; but that sort of joke wouldn't do with Napoleon. So he said to his demons, his veterans, those that had the toughest hide, 'Go, clear me the way.' Junot, a sabre of the first cut, and his particular friend, took a thousand men, no more, and ripped up the army of the pacha who had had the presumption to put himself in the way. After that, we came back to headquarters at Cairo. Now, here's another ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... without its rider, they imagined that the aga had been attacked and murdered by banditti when he had followed his troop. They sent to me to ask at what time he had left my house; I replied, an hour after dark—that he was very much intoxicated at the time—and had left his sabre, which I returned. They had no suspicion of the real facts, and it was believed that he had ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... end of the cloth pulled up in front so as to resemble a small cockade. His uniform was blue-black, and he wore long boots. A broad black leather cross-belt, with two very large brass buckles, crossed his breast. He had sabre, pistols, and carbine." ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... income tax is practically abolished, our industrial troubles are over. Our credit never stood so high, the wealth of the country was never so great. We are satisfied. A peaceful nation makes for peace. The rattling of the sabre incites military disturbance. Do not ask us, gentlemen, to ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and the flakes of foam with which his impatient champings had covered his broad chest—was tied up near the stable door, the bridle removed, finishing out of a nose-bag a plentiful feed of maize. The dragoon's sabre and his brass and leopard-skin helmet were hanging at the saddle-bow, their owner having temporarily covered his head with a smart foraging-cap of green and scarlet cloth, which set off to great advantage his bearded and martial countenance. Having provided ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... I my death could view; * My death were better than these griefs to rue, Did sabre hew me limb by limb; this were * Naught to affright ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... men. They had light hair, but were very thick-set. They looked very tired, and were covered with dust and with torn clothes: but they had good horses. They wore the Prussian helmet and spike, and were well armed, with a sabre on one side and on the other a huge horse-pistol two feet long, while they carried carbines in their hands, all ready to shoot if occasion offered. But all the French soldiers had left Versailles, except a few National Guards. The inhabitants looked very sad; the women were ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... doing, that he could not trouble to write? A murmur of voices in the road made her lean from the window. A cavalryman of the little garrison in the town was talking to Kami's cook. The moonlight glittered on the scabbard of his sabre, which he was holding in his hand lest it should clank inopportunely. The cook's cap cast deep shadows on her face, which was close to the conscript's. He slid his arm round her waist, and there followed the sound of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... stood out, palely illuminated, like the features of a bronze statue above which a torch suddenly flares. His shoulders, which stooped until his coat had curved in the back, straightened themselves with a jerk, while he held out his hand, on which an old sabre cut was still visible. This faded scar had always seemed to Gabriel the solitary proof that the great man was created ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... stagger, so that I was surprised to hear what he said about the war. He was talking to someone who evidently had been in the army himself, but on the other side—a gentleman with the loyal-legion button in his coat, and with a beautiful scar, a sabre-cut across his face. He was telling of a charge in some battle or skirmish in which, he declared, his company, not himself—for I remember he said he was "No. 4", and was generally told off to hold the horses; and that that day he had had the ill luck to lose his ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... and the Quai de la Monnaie. At the Pont Neuf we pass a band of men armed with pikes, axes and rifles, headed by a drummer, and led by a man brandishing a sabre and wearing a long coat of the King's livery. It is the coat of the coachman who has just been killed in the Rue Saint Thomas ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... pistol in my right hand, and was about to fire, when down came a sword, which would have clove my head in two, had not a lieutenant of marines in the next boat interposed his own weapon, and saved me. But the act was one of self-devotion, for the Frenchman brought his sabre down on my preserver's arm, while another thrust a pike through his body, and hurled him back, mortally wounded, to the bottom of the boat. I should, after all, have shared the same fate, had not Mr Johnson at that instant recovered himself, and with a shout, loud enough to make our enemies ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... contumacious or knocking out their teeth. Not knowing at the time the secret of the unusual efficacy of his blows, they regarded him as a "medicine" of the first order. La Potherie ascribes the loss of his hand to a sabre-cut received in a sortie at Messina; but Tonty, in his Memoire, says, as above, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... A Turkish sabre of ancient manufacture from Constantinople is shown in Fig. 3. The handle is painted a dull creamy white in imitation of ivory. The enamel paint sold in small tins will answer well for this purpose. The cross guard and blade are covered as described in Fig. 1. The sharp edge ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... self-sacrifice was a Priceless National Asset: No rational person, they said, could fail to be deeply impressed by the charms Of that truly august conception, a Nation in Arms: To become expert in the use of strictly defensive weapons, spear or sword, Lee-Metford, torpedo, or sabre, Was a duty—if not for oneself, yet incumbent without any shadow of doubt on one's neighbour; Still there were some who might possibly urge that the world was at peace, and the time was not ripe ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... captivity, the horrors of which will never be known, five men with sabres, in the twilight, were seen to enter the room and close the door. There were wild cries and shrieks and groans. Three times a hacked and a blunted sabre was passed out of a window in exchange for a sharper one. Finally the groans and moans gradually ceased and all was still. The next morning a mass of mutilated remains were thrown ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... drum awoke; Onward the bondmen broke Bayonet and sabre stroke Vainly opposed their rush Through the wild battle's crush, With but one thought aflush, ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... Worshipping honour and valour and beauty— When, like a brave man, in fearless resistance, I have fought the good fight on the field of existence; When a home I have won in the conflict of labour, With truth for my armour and thought for my sabre, Be that home a calm home where my old age may rally, A home full of peace in this sweet pleasant valley! Sweetest of vales is the Vale of Shanganah! Greenest of vales is the Vale of Shanganah! May the accents of love, like the droppings of manna, Fall sweet on my heart in ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... Sisters.' I was Pluto to your Diavoline, and Philip Berkley was a phantom that grinned at everybody and rattled the bones; and I waked in a dreadful fright to hear uncle's spurred boots overhead, and that horrid noisy old sabre of his banging the ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... as to his face beyond such as was given by a strip of plaister, running from the upper lip to the temple. He strode gaily along, sometimes walking alone, sometimes joining some other wayfarer, telling every one that he was from Bordeaux, where he had been to see his parents, and get cured of a sabre cut. ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... habit he travelled first-class, materially lessening his five pounds. In the carriage, which he had to himself, he sat stunned. He was rather angry than dismayed and appalled. He was like the soldier, cut down by a sabre-slash or struck by a bullet, who, for a second, stares dully at the red gash or blue hole—waiting for the blood to flow and the pain ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... some slight provision of tents, of shelter in the frozen sleety Mountains, to our gallant fellows bound thither?' Upon which another starts up, 'When our Ancestors came out of Asia Minor, over the Palus Maeotis bound in winter ice; and, sabre in hand, cut their way into this fine Country which is still ours, what shelter had they? No talk of tents, of barracks or accommodation there; each, wrapt in his sheep skin, found it shelter sufficient. Tents!' [ Helden-Geschichte, ii. 1030.] And the thing was carried ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... work by the tents, and warriors, horrid with war-paint, Seated about a fire and smoking and talking together; Who, when they saw from afar the sudden approach of the white men, Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate and sabre and musket, 750 Straightway leaped to their feet, and two, from among them advancing, Came to parley with Standish, and offer him furs as a present; Friendship was in their looks, but in their hearts there was hatred. Braves of the tribe were these, ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... commanded respect and attention. He bore his seventy odd years lightly and his slight form was as straight as a ramrod. His uniform, unlike those of his faithful followers, was immaculately spotless. His carbine, on which he rested, was gold mounted; the sabre at his side was elegantly chased and decorated, and the silver on his pistol handles glittered in the waning light. As he turned his eyes on the group in the doorway, his heavy iron-grey eyebrows contracted into a scowl and he spoke quickly to O'Connor. The ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... once cut down or dispersed, Lieutenant Budd being wounded and knocked down the main hatchway. "The enemy," writes Captain Broke, "fought desperately, but in disorder." Lieutenant Ludlow, already mortally wounded, struggled up on deck followed by two or three men, but was at once disabled by a sabre cut. On the forecastle a few seamen and marines turned to bay. Captain Broke was still leading his men with the same brilliant personal courage he had all along shown. Attacking the first American, who was armed with a pike, he parried a blow from it, and cut down the man; attacking ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... stud the lily's leaf like sabre broad and keen; Bent on merry gipsy party, crowd they all the flow'ry green! List to me, if thou desirest, these beholding, joy to glean: Gaily live! for soon will vanish, biding not, the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Guard. 'A guard of the broadsword or sabre used in warding off blows directed against the head'.—C. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... shelved so deeply, that, while the hemlock-tassels were swinging on the trees around its border, all would be still at its springy bottom, save that perhaps a single fern would wave slowly backward and forward like a sabre with a twist as of a feathered oar,—and this when not a breath could be felt, and every other stem and blade were motionless. There was an old story of one having perished here in the winter of '86, and his body having been found ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tour maintenant, et je vais envoyer Chercher un autre estoc pour vous, dit Olivier. Le sabre du geant Sinnagog est a Vienne. C'est, apres Durandal, le seul qui vous convienne. Mon pere le lui prit ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... revolutions in human history, at each of its appearances, even in its later ones, in 1682, 1759, 1835; it was also presented to the Earth under the most diverse aspects, passing through a great variety of forms, from the appearance of a curved sabre, as in 1456, to that of a misty head, as in its last visit. Moreover, this is not an exception to the general rule, for these mysterious stars have had the gift of exercising a power on the imagination which plunged it in ecstasy or trouble. Swords of fire, bloody ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... statue in Berlin is that of General Ziethen, the great Hussar commander in the Seven Years' War. [Footnote: Von Schlater's statue of the Great Elector is of course a more magnificent work of art.] He stands leaning on his sabre in a dreamy, nonchalant attitude, as if he were in the centre of indifference and life had little interest for him. Yet there never was a man more ready for action, or more quick to seize upon and solve the nodus of any new emergency. The Prussian anecdote-books are ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... well-trained sense of narrative; and it is often hard to concede to the hero the narrative ability that he displays. How is it, we may ask, that Jim Hawkins is capable of such masterly description as that of "the brown old seaman, with the sabre cut," in the second paragraph of "Treasure Island"? How is it that David Balfour, an untutored boy, is capable of writing the rhythmic prose of Robert Louis Stevenson, master of style? And in many cases it is also difficult to concede ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... dinner, sir," said a lackey, introducing a finely powdered head gently within the door. I looked at my watch, it was eight o'clock; so snatching my sabre, and shocked at my delay, I hastily followed the servant down-stairs, and thus at once cut short ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... he exclaimed, casting his eyes round in every direction. "Ah, what is that I see in the corner there?" He pointed to what proved to be a Moorish turban; while near it lay a piece of a sabre, which, from its curved form, evidently belonged to ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... distinguished himself in one of the lesser Indian hill wars. He it was who took the chieftain prisoner with his own hand; his gallantry was universally applauded; and when he came home, prostrated by an ugly sabre cut and a protracted jungle fever, society was prepared to welcome the Lieutenant as a celebrity of minor lustre. But his was a character remarkable for unaffected modesty; adventure was dear to his heart, but he cared little for adulation; and ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were camels, oxen and cows, sheep, goats, and horses. They were very proud of their horses, and they rode them with great courage and spirit. They always went mounted in going to war. Their arms were bows and arrows, pikes or spears, and a sort of sword or sabre, which was manufactured in some of the towns toward the west, and supplied to them in the course of trade by great ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... indescribable vigour poured from his lips. In a group some feet away stood six muscular, short-sleeved stage-hands. It was they who had flung themselves on the general at the fall of the iron curtain and prevented him dashing round to attack the stalls with his sabre. At a sign from the stage-manager they were ready ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... told the dragoon that the pussy old man over by the fence had stolen his cap. That was Pa. Then I told Pa that the soldier on the horse said he was a rebel, and he was going to kill him. The soldier started after Pa with his sabre drawn, and Pa started to run, and it ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... humour, and no understanding of a joke. He drank water and sucked lemons for dyspepsia, and fancied that the use of pepper had caused a weakness in his left leg. He rode a raw-boned nag named Little Sorrel, he carried his sabre in the oddest fashion, and said "oblike" instead of "oblique." He found his greatest pleasure in going to the Presbyterian Church twice on Sundays and to prayer meetings through the week. Now and then there was a gleam in his eye that promised something, but ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... occupied trying to save a wretched publican named Spratt from the fury of the crowd. The man had been dragged out into the streets, and Felix had got as near him as he could when a young constable armed with a sabre rushed upon him. It was a choice of two evils, and quick as lightning Felix frustrated him, the constable fell undermost and Felix got his weapon. Tucker did not rise immediately, but Felix did not imagine ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... hand in hand like links enlocked, "Thro' the light air they seemed to flit "In labyrinthine maze, that mocked "The dazzled eye that followed it?" Some called aloud "the Fountain Dance!"— While one young, dark-eyed Amazon, Whose step was air-like and whose glance Flashed, like a sabre in the sun, Sportively said, "Shame on these soft "And languid strains we hear so oft. "Daughters of Freedom! have not we "Learned from our lovers and our sires "The Dance of Greece, while Greece was free— "That Dance, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... order to fight with a superior officer whom he disliked. In reality his straitened means may have had something to do with the step. At all events he scratched his major rather severely in the duel which took place, and has the reputation of a dangerous man with the sabre. It is said that the major's wife had something to do with the story. At present San Miniato is about thirty years of age. His only known vice is gambling, which is perhaps a chief source of income to him. ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... at once, and gave Dick a blizzard. The ball went through his ear—the red pepper took his eyes, while Jim received the shot in his hat, and with it the sweet oil. In this sweet state of affairs, CHARLEY RUFFEM of Savannah was descending on me with his sabre. (He was the man who said my browns were all put in with guano.) I put him out of the way of criticism with a third barrel—killed him ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... inscription on that old basket-hilted sabre," said Clovis, pointing to a venerable weapon hanging on the wall. "I wish you'd take it to her; my hands are all over oil. Take it without the sheath, it will be ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... to Washington in November, and again duty called me to the White House. The war was now in progress, and every day brought stirring news from the front—the front, where the Gray opposed the Blue, where flashed the bright sabre in the sunshine, where were heard the angry notes of battle, the deep roar of cannon, and the fearful rattle of musketry; where new graves were being made every day, where brother forgot a mother's early blessing and sought the lifeblood ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... the signal for his execution. The poor wretch was struck down by an ill-directed blow of a sabre. He fell, but wounded only, and perhaps the arrival of the French might have saved him, had not the people perceived that he was yet alive. They forced the barrier, fell upon him, and ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... you, but ye must adventure yourselves and address us in such unseemly speech? Do you think to escape out of our hands and return to your country?" Then he shouted to his hundred horsemen, "Up and at these hounds, for they even you in number!" So saying, he bared his sabre and bore down on them, he and his, but the Franks met them with hearts firmer than rocks, and wight dashed against wight, and knight dashed upon knight, and hot waxed the fight, and sore was the affright, and nor parley nor cries of quarter helped their ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Europe. Books have been made from English journals to show how extraordinarily they berated this country during the Secession war, because Americans were so brutally perverse and so selfishly silly as not to submit their country's throat to the Southern sabre for the benefit of Britain, which condescends to think that our national existence is something not altogether compatible with her safety. But a collection made from the same journals of articles assailing Prussia in general, and Count Bismarck in particular, would be even richer than anything that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... seems to pass. She calls for help. Sometimes the crowds are stationary, as if frozen into stone, sometimes they follow the snake and attack it with sticks and knives. One man with colossal shoulders wields a great sabre; it flashes about him like lightning. Will he kill it? He turns, chases a dog, and disappears. The people too have disappeared. She is now flying along a wild plain covered with coarse grass and wild poppies. The snake is near ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... stubborn resistance, and aware of the danger of delay, hurled themselves upon that devoted little bond with a fury before which nothing could stand. Man after man dropped across his gun; but still Forrester shouted to his men and swung his sabre. It was no time for counting heads. He hardly knew whether, when he shouted, thirty, or twenty, or only ten shouted back. All he knew was the enemy had not got the guns yet, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... salaried by Bismarck, known as reptiles, now turn on him, for a similar salary, the venomous fangs which he formerly aimed at his innumerable enemies. And yonder, in the parliament where formerly he strode in with sabre, and belt, and spurred boots, a helmet under his arm, a cuirass on his breast, he will now enter like a chicken-hearted charity-school boy, and that assembly which he formerly whipped with a strong hand, like school-boys, laughed at and caricatured in often brutal sarcasm, ridiculed ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... early next morning before daybreak, got breakfast with the early railroad-passengers, and about sunrise was at the gate of General Fremont's headquarters. A sentinel with drawn sabre paraded up and down in front of the house. I had on my undress uniform indicating my rank, and inquired of the sentinel, "Is General Fremont up?" He answered, "I don't know." Seeing that he was a soldier by his bearing, I spoke ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... on the wind—then, loud shouts. Stuart lowered his glasses, shut them up, replaced them in their case, and drew his sabre. ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... it, and just as the princess slipped through the window into her bedroom, and the magician turned round to fly back to the mountain, he seized him by the long black beard, and with his sabre cut off the wicked conjuror's head just behind the shoulders, so that he could not even see who it was. He threw the body into the sea to the fishes, and after dipping the head into the water, he tied it up in a silk handkerchief, took it with him to the inn, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... want of a copious, carefully weighed concluding chapter is more sensible to me than ever; but the substance of the book is genuine truth, and the utterance of it is clear, sharp, smiting, and decisive, like a shining Damascus sabre; I never doubted or doubt but its effect will be great and lasting. No criticism have I seen since you went away that was worth notice. Poor Lecky is weak as water—bilge-water with a drop of formic acid in it: unfortunate Lecky, he is wedded to his Irish ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... meanwhile Blue Beard, holding a great sabre in his hand, cried to his wife as loud ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... insists on bothering him. And this race of ours has therefore often, patient as it is, flamed out into occasional leonine wrath. It really does not like fighting. That performance interferes with its proper business. It takes to the ploughshare more kindly than to the sabre, and likes to manage a steam engine better than a six-gun battery. But if imbeciles and scoundrels will get in its way, and will mar its pet labors, then, heaven help them! The patient blood blazes into lava, fire, the big muscles strain ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... economic loss to the natives, and to the company that owns the right of hunting. During the journey we were accordingly accompanied by the chief of the village, a black-haired stammering Aleutian, and "the Cossack," a young, pleasant, and agreeable fellow, who on solemn occasions wore a sabre nearly as long as himself, but besides did not in the least correspond to the Cossack type of the writers of novels ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Major produced for my inspection, the pike which he had invented, and recommended in his "England's Aegis," to be used for the national defence. It was of a very curious and ingenious construction, with a sort of double shaft, to protect the hands of him who used it from the blows of a sabre, &c. The Major was in high spirits, and exhibited to us all the various purposes of attack and defence for which it was calculated. I was highly delighted with the old Major, at this first introduction ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... exhibition of paintings were once displayed two panels precisely similar in appearance, presenting an army coat and cap, a sabre and a canteen. At a distance there was no point of difference in the two. A nearer view disclosed the fact that on one panel the objects were real and that the other panel was painted. The beholder was pleased by the exhibition of the painter's skill; but in so far as the work did ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... wearing very thick armour, and wielding a longer sword or spear, to be invulnerable to men of lesser force, while he could perform what feats he pleased in defeating them. As gun-powder has destroyed the use of heavy armour, though with the sabre and bayonet men are not equal, they are all much more nearly so. No one is invulnerable, even in single combat, with the arme blanche, and with fire arms they are nearly on an equality. The changes that this makes, through every department ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... riding by day and night. In time he became used to all that. He could even endure the irregular feeding, the sleeping in the open during all kinds of weather, and the lack of proper grooming. But the vicious jerks on the torture-provoking cavalry bit, the flat sabre blows on the flank which he not infrequently got from his ill-tempered master, and, above all, the cruel digs of the spur-wheels—these things he could not understand. Such treatment he was sure he did not merit. "Mars" Clayton he came to hate more and more. Some ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... heroic deeds and sufferings of the Duchess of Berry, and was eager, like those forceful women, devoted to their legitimate rulers and to religion, to mount a war horse, wearing an image of Christ on her breast, with a sabre hanging by her side. This desire, however, did not pass beyond vague dreams. In reality she had been on no other expedition than a trip to Catalonia, during the last Carlist war, to see at closer range the sacred enterprise which was absorbing a ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... prisoner, one of Arnold's forlorn hope, who could not restrain his grief for the brave General who had been the idol of his troops. Widow Prentice, of Freemasons' Hall, also recognised Montgomery by the sabre-cut upon his cheek; and Sir Guy Carleton having no further doubt as to his identity, gave orders that the slain General should have honourable burial. Up Mountain Hill they bore him to the small house in St. Louis Street, still known as Montgomery ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... moving of all Tintoretto's creations, the "S. Mary of Egypt," the emotional mood of Nature's self is brought home to us. The trees that dominate the landscape are painted with a few "strokes like sabre cuts"; the landscape, given with apparent carelessness, yet conveying an indescribable sense of space and solemnity, unfolds itself under the dying day; and in solitary meditation, thrilling with ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... what I have got on my back," said Philippe, opening his horrible blue overcoat; "but I only need three things, which you must tell Giroudeau, the uncle of Finot, to send me,—my sabre, my sword, and ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... This is the very hook mentioned in my preface—if you read prefaces—got from the corner butcher. The Captain would be a frightful man to meet socially. I can hear a host saying "Shake hands with the Captain." One quite loses his taste for dinner parties. There is a sabre cut across the Captain's cheek. He is even more disreputable in appearance than his followers, with a bluster that marks ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... began to roll about the plates, and at last out hopped a little pig. They chased it about awhile with skewers, and finally, just as it was caught, it changed into an imp, with horns and hoofs, and a sabre by its side. Of course the company were greatly frightened, and tumbled down on the stage, pell-mell, all in a heap. But one sad day a performer thrust too hard with his sharp skewer, and poor little Louis performed and played no more. They laid him away in the pleasant ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to Haidee's bitter shriek, And caught her falling, and from off the wall Snatched down his sabre, in hot haste to wreak Vengeance on him who was the cause of all: Then Lambro, who till now forbore to speak, Smiled scornfully, and said, "Within my call, A thousand scimitars await the word; Put up, young man, put ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... unharmed through the severe campaign of 1744. In the next year he fought in Italy under Marechal de Maillebois. In 1746, at the disastrous action under the walls of Piacenza, where he twice rallied his regiment, he received five sabre-cuts,—two of which were in the head,—and was made prisoner. Returning to France on parole, he was promoted in the year following to the rank of brigadier; and being soon after exchanged, rejoined the army, and was again wounded by a musket-shot. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... iron, purposed ne'er That man should be a slave; Therefore the sabre, sword, and spear In his right hand He gave. Therefore He gave him fiery mood, Fierce speech, and free-born breath, That he might fearlessly the feud Maintain through ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... wounds, which his own sabre gave, In the vile habit of a village slave, The foe deceived, he pass'd the tented plain, In Troy to mingle with the hostile train. In this attire secure from searching eyes, Till happily piercing through the dark disguise, The chief I challenged; he, whose practised wit ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope |
