"Battering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sprawling, And driving and riving and striving, And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling, And sounding and bounding and rounding, And bubbling and troubling and doubling, And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling, And clattering and battering and shattering, Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting, Delaying and straying and playing and spraying, Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing, Recoiling, turmoiling and toiling ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1875 • Various
... find his wife,— No, not his wife, but fatal mother-croft, Cropped doubly with himself and his own seed. And in his rage some god directed him To find her:—'twas no man of us at hand. Then with a fearful shout, as following His leader, he assailed the folding-doors; And battering inward from the mortised bolts The bending boards, he burst into the room: Where high suspended we beheld the queen, In twisted cordage resolutely swung. He all at once on seeing her, wretched king! Undid ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... as we struggled forward through the dampening sand, her dress clinging about her and retarding progress, I dared to slip one arm about her waist to help in bearing her along. She accepted this timely aid in the spirit with which it was offered, without so much as a word of protest; and the wind, battering at our ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... within, in which the sixteen occupants of the place were lodged, unsuspicious of danger. Troyes approached at night. Iberville and Sainte-Helene with a few followers climbed the palisade on one side, while the rest of the party burst the main gate with a sort of battering ram, and rushed in, yelling the war-whoop. In a moment, the door of the blockhouse was dashed open, and its astonished inmates captured in ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... profession, do stand for method in all things. Thus, would I attack a city, I do it modo et forma: first, I set up my mantelets for my archers, and under cover of their swift shooting I set me up my mangonels, my trebuchets and balistae: then, pushing me up, assault the walls with cat, battering-ram and sap, and having made me a breach, would forthwith take me the place ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... warriors bore the heavy tree forward, so that the larger end was against the side of the fort. Then, instead of using it as a battering ram, they lifted it higher until, with an exertion that must have been very great, it was raised even with the log wall. A combined effort rested the butt on the support, the trunk sloping downward, until the top reached the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... There could be no denial that many such attacks could break through the line. General Sarrail's army, fighting a losing game, showed marvelous stubbornness and gameness, but even so, it could not resist being pushed south of Fort Troyon, itself unable to support the battering it might expect to receive when the German siege guns ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... twined up from the earth as if they grew from seeds planted by the storm. But there was no wind, no sound from the peaks. Only under his stiff body Shann could still feel that vibration which was the sea battering ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... thundering culverin, he rode through the greaves and bucklers of his donjon-keep with as gallant a troop of Christian bandits as ever stepped in Italy. He had his sword, Excalibur, with him. His beautiful countess and her young daughter waved him a tearful adieu from the battering-rams and buttresses of the fortress, and he galloped away ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... key into the plantation, just as, with a crash, the inner door succumbed; and, headed by Garcia, the party of Indians rushed into the kitchen, to utter howls of rage and disappointment on finding it empty, and then began battering the door I had ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... city where the church stood; and had planted their great guns mischievously against the church; with which constantly in prayer's time, they would not fail to make their hellish disturbance by shooting against and battering the church; insomuch that sometimes a cannon bullet has come in at the windows and bounced about from pillar to pillar (even like some furious fiend or evil spirit) backwards and forwards and all manner of sideways, as it has ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... the presence of a young woman whom I recognised, when she drew aside her veil, as Miss Mary Ryerson, sister of Lieutenant Randolph Ryerson. With her in the car were her brother and a tall, gaunt man with deep-set eyes. They were all travel-stained, and the car showed the battering ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... to translate the Koran, or build a new Saint Paul's, there would have been many chances of success; for, once moved, her will, like a battering-ram, would knock down the obstacles her wits could not surmount. John believed in her most heartily, and showed it, as he answered, looking into her ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... at my stomach, my head intolerably heavy, and my temples bruised with the blows I had received, and having a sensation as if they were ready to burst. To all this was added the stiffness that pervaded the muscles of my arms, and body, from the bruises, falls, and battering they had received. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... forewarned them) were hidden from their eyes!" Their hour was come, and the triumphant shouts of the enemy were heard around their stubborn walls, which (massy as they were) dropped to the ground under the subduing power of the battering-rams of war. With these massive engines of destruction, they laid the two first walls in ruin! But the third and last wall it was not in the power of the enemy to gain. The Jews fought with desperation, and by valiant exertions kept the enemy at bay, and for a while seemed to ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... inland, and great pans of ten-foot-thick ice, from a few yards to twenty acres square, were jolting and ducking and surging into one another, and into the yet unbroken floe, as the heavy swell took and shook and spouted between them. This battering-ram ice was, so to speak, the first army that the sea was flinging against the floe. The incessant crash and jar of these cakes almost drowned the ripping sound of sheets of pack-ice driven bodily under the floe as cards ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... iron hut had been placed there since 1858; but the windows had been carried off, the door broken down, the roof pierced all over. In it we sat to make experiments; and how it recalled Birkenhead! There was Thomson, there was my testing-board, the strings of gutta-percha; Harry P—— even battering with the batteries; but where was my darling Annie? Whilst I sat, feet in sand, with Harry alone inside the hut—mats, coats, and wood to darken the window—the others visited the murderous old friar, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... perfectly accurate; for Mr. Bob Sawyer, having attached the case-bottle to the end of the walking-stick, was battering the window with it, in token of his wish, that his friends inside would partake of its contents, in all good-fellowship ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... of the winter, 1914-15, she was still in the possession of a large portion of Galicia. But the Germans were preparing a battering ram which their generals thought irresistible. Their plan now was to deliver so hard a blow at the Russian that he would be forced to yield a separate peace. Von Mackensen formed his unprecedented phalanx of soldiery and of artillery in Galicia and destroying all the fortifications and covering ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... are, you see. Take Prescott. He's never crocked a man seriously in his life. I don't count being winded. That's absolutely an accident. Well, there you are, then. Prescott weighs thirteen-ten, and he's all muscle, and he goes like a battering-ram. You'll own that. He goes as hard as he jolly well knows how, and yet the worst he has ever done is to lay a man out for a couple of minutes while he gets his wind back. Well, compare him with this Bargee man. The Bargee weighs a stone less and isn't nearly as strong, and yet he smashes Tony's ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... itself around this point, battering down the startled opposition. With fast-coming breath Dave's comrades pushed him along breaking down all opposition—until Dave, with a sudden, wild dash, was over the line ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... "This is sure a sarcastic layout; dope enough here to cure all the sickness in Montana—if a fellow knew enough to use it—battering a hole in my leg you could throw a yearling calf into, and me wandering wild over the hills like a locoed sheepherder! Glory, you get a move on yuh, you knock-kneed, buzzard-headed—" He subsided into incoherent ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... courage execute, while the garrison of forty thousand Turks, who maintained the city for their master, the caliph of Egypt, resisted with determined obstinacy. At length, after a confession of sins by the whole army, and a penitential procession around the walls, a simultaneous attack was made with battering-rains, mangonels, and all manner of besieging engines. At one quarter a huge wooden tower was wheeled close to the walls, a movable bridge was let down, and, bounding across it, a soldier named Lutold was the ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... marble floor beyond the mat; but the hole made was not in the best place, and there was another crash as the butt of a musket was driven through higher up, and simultaneously there was the loud report of the piece used as a battering-ram. ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... without making any material impression, and then hauled out of gun-shot, the Fortitude having lost 6 men killed and 56 wounded, 8 dangerously. The troops were disembarked, and took possession of a height comnanding the tower; and their battering was as unsuccessful, till a hot shot fell and set fire to the bass-junk, with which, to the depth of five feet, the immensely thick parapet wall was lined. This induced the small garrison, of whom two were mortally ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... one responding, with a blow of the shoulder that was as violent as a blow from a battering-ram, he dashed open the door. Then the horror-stricken accent of the man who had been peering through the shutters was explained. The room presented such a spectacle that all the agents, and even Gevrol himself, remained for a moment rooted to the threshold, shuddering ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... great gate of the palace. At first, the knights tried to shatter it with their battle- axes; but, being shown a window by which they could enter, they let the gate alone, and climbed in that way. While they were battering at the door, the attendants of Thomas a Becket had implored him to take refuge in the Cathedral; in which, as a sanctuary or sacred place, they thought the knights would dare to do no violent deed. He told them, again and again, that he would not stir. Hearing the distant voices of ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... to observe Belgium's neutrality, and at that very moment her guns were battering the little nation to bits. Was that just a European affair, or did it amount to a ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... incautiously done soon after, the militia-men proceeded in a body to the gaol, and demanded their comrade; and compliance with the demand being refused, they seized a long piece of timber that lay in the street, near the prison, and this they used as a battering-ram against the door of the gaol, which they soon forced off its hinges. I was sitting in the back dining-room at my house, No. 1, Lady Mead, and I witnessed the transaction myself. About the third effort with the battering-ram, each of which was cheered by the populace, I saw the prison ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... you see, Peter, we must try and get help to cut away the lower rigging, which keeps the masts battering against ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... she could hear no voice through the howling wind and battering rain. Then Sally's wail sounded, and Grandma's call: "Rose-Ellen! Jimmie! ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... who could take the world by its ears and conquer their fate, while women, metaphorically speaking, were forced to sit with tied hands and patiently suffer as the waves of fate tossed them hither and thither, battering and bruising without mercy. Familiarity made me used to this yoke; I recovered from the disappointment of being a girl, and was reconciled to that part of my fate. In fact, I found that being a girl was ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... at the door, which was securely locked. They finally caught up the nearest church pew, and, using it as a battering ram, they succeeded in smashing the heavy oaken panels. The door had been barricaded with a cross bar. As they cautiously peered in through the forced opening they saw the room ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... hands. Bridge rolled another smoke. The sound of a shot came from the front room of the jail, immediately followed by a roar of rage from the mob and a deafening hammering upon the jail door. A moment later this turned to the heavy booming of a battering ram and the splintering of wood. The frail structure quivered beneath ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Lord's Supper—the mass, you call it,"—said Blanche, bringing up at last her strongest battering-ram, "you do hold, as I have been taught, Don John, that the bread and wine be changed into the very self body and blood of our Saviour Christ, that it is no more bread and wine at all. Now how can you believe a matter so plainly confuted by your ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... inaugurating and merely local acts of Constantine, we shall be sufficiently accurate in saying that the corresponding period in the fifth century (namely, from about 404 to 420 A. D.) first witnessed those uproars of ruin in Egypt and Alexandria—fire racing along the old carious timbers, battering- rams thundering against the ancient walls of the most horrid temples— which rang so searchingly in the ears of Zosimus, extorting, at every blow, a howl of Pagan sympathy from that ignorant calumniator of Christianity. So far from the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... long voyages, a blue-water sailor and all it means; but battering back and forward round the Horn with my deck cluttered up by prospectors and shore crews the mates would have to slam into the rigging—!" His exclamation refused every face of such a possibility. She understood his necessity ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... which Napoleon intended to surmount, that he might fall upon the rear of the Austrians, who were battering down the walls of Genoa, where Massena was besieged, and who were thundering, flushed with victory, at the very gates of Nice. Over this wild mountain pass, where the mule could with difficulty tread, and where no wheel had ever rolled, or by any possibility could roll, ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... Hilary's head that he began to be alarmed for the safety of his skull, and after a good dead of wriggling he managed to screw himself so far round that when the next assault took place with the stick and battering with the donkey's heels the front boards of the cart only ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... arch leading to the apartments of the abbe. Just as these preparations were complete, Esprit Seguier caught sight of a heavy beam of wood lying in a ditch; this was raised by a dozen men and used as a battering-ram to force in the gate, which soon showed a breach. Thus encouraged, the workers, cheered by the chants of their comrades, soon got the gate off the hinges, and thus the outside court was taken. The ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... answer to her question became profound and in it the ticking of the old clock sounded like the blows of a blacksmith's hammer, the purring of the cat like the roar of machinery, and the beating of his heart like the dull thud of a battering ram. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... opinion dethroning belief, the world shaking off Rome. It was the prognostication of the philosopher who sees human thought, volatilized by the press, evaporating from the theocratic recipient. It was the terror of the soldier who examines the brazen battering ram, and says:—"The tower will crumble." It signified that one power was about to succeed another power. It meant, "The press will ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... we decided that at the next division we would throw our feet for grub and make a rush back to our ice-boxes. We arrived in the town of Green River late in the afternoon, but too early for supper. Before meal-time is the worst time for "battering" back-doors; but we put on our nerve, swung off the side-ladders as the freight pulled into the yards, and made a run for the houses. We were quickly separated; but we had agreed to meet in the ice-boxes. I ...
— The Road • Jack London
... argument ready, and etiquette was waived. "Time!" she repeated, and then the two battering-rams, revolving their fists country-fashion, engaged. Half-forgotten Homeric phrases began to flit from a faraway schoolroom back into the little teacher's mind and she began to be consoled for the absence of gloves—those tough old ancients had used gauges of iron and steel. The two boys were evenly ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... the extemporized police reappeared. The fugitives had been found tranquilly sitting on the banks of the river, distending their abdomens with the stolen preserves and chocolate. Aragon and his men fell upon the deserters without mercy. The former, battering away at them with the stock of his gun, and the latter, exercising upon their shoulders whatever they possessed in the way of lassoes, axe-handles and sabre-blades, maintained the argument effectually for some time in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... Credence on the one hand, and the Lord Willbewill on the other: now Willbewill's blows were like the blows of a giant, for that man had a strong arm, and he fell in upon the election doubters, for they were the life-guard of Diabolus, and he kept them in play a good while, cutting and battering shrewdly. Now when Captain Credence saw my lord engaged, he did stoutly fall on, on the other hand, upon the same company also; so they put them to great disorder. Now Captain Good-Hope had engaged the vocation doubters, and they were sturdy men; but the captain ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... advance as quickly as possible, he got them into position and suddenly rushed upon the first of the four or five negro quarters. Knowing that the door of this house would be barricaded, he had instructed some of the negroes to bring a pole with them which might be used as a battering ram. With a rush but without any hurrah,—for Duncan had ordered quiet as a part of his plan of campaign,—the negroes carried the great pole forward and instantly crushed in the door. Within ten seconds afterwards Duncan's ex-Confederate soldiers, with their pistols in use, were ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... Greffington Edge was fixed across the open window, immovable, immutable. Her knees felt tired. She lay down on her bed, staring at the immovable, immutable white walls. She tried to think of Substance, of the Reality behind appearances. She could feel her mind battering at the walls of her body, the walls of her room, the walls of the world. She could hear it ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... or short he could not tell—he had heard continued cries and groans. He had now and then been dully aware of a change in the noises. Now it would seem as if all else was swallowed up in the sound of tremendous blows, as if the car were being struck again and again by a mighty battering-ram. Then a chorus of shouting went roaring up, as if an army cried. Noise and physical sensation were too intimately blended to be separated; his brain struggled in confusion, emerging now and then for a moment of consecutive thought and sinking back into semi-unconsciousness ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... cut down a tree which they used as a battering-ram against the gate; but the stern bars were yet unbroken. It was now pitch-dark. A thunderstorm had suddenly gathered, and the report of the distant bolt came upon the ear, mingling with the still more appalling clash of the ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... you as noisy as a magpie. If you're not whistling, you're singing some damned rake of an Irish song and if you're not singing, you're at the piano battering out a ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... them, using his shoulder as a battering-ram. Not the thousandth part of an inch could he feel them give, yet he worked until his shoulder was sore. Then he paused and studied the bars more carefully. Only one thing would avail him, and that was some object which he might use ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... know that you are hesitating at what most men would jump at," she retorted, suddenly conscious of strained nerves and feeling as if she were battering impotently against a granite rock-face. His hands clenched but he did not reply and swift contrition fell on her. She turned to him impulsively. "Forgive me, Barry. I shouldn't have said that, but I want this thing so desperately. I am convinced that it would mean happiness for you, for ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... teaching of a long succession of political charlatans; how the insidious doctrine of separation and a Pacific Republic had been hissed by serpents into the ears of the people; how the great dark cloud of impending ruin hung over our central Government; how legions of armed patricides were almost battering at the gates of our National Capital; how rebellion had baptized itself in blood and victory at Bull Run—when we think how the effect of all these adverse teachings and adverse fortunes had rendered the public mind plastic to whoever had the genius to seize ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... howl pealed out from the assailants, and then the stout oak door cracked and quivered under the strokes of a heavy battering-beam; in a hundred seconds the hinges yielded, and it came clattering in; over it leaped three wild figures, bearing torches and pikes, but their chief, Delaney, was ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... to the roof, from which he and the other brave defenders of the palace hurled stones and beams of wood upon the enemy below. But all their heroic efforts were in vain. In front of the principal gate, battering upon it with his huge battle-axe, stood Neoptolemus (also called Pyr'rhus) the son of Achilles. Soon its posts, though plated with bronze, gave way before his mighty strokes, and a great breach was made, through which the Greeks poured into the stately ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... divisions of the grand army and a battering-train of the first grade off to the South without the loss of a second. A palace and establishment were immediately directed to be prepared for the family of the murdered monarch, and the commander-in-chief was instructed to make every exertion to bring ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... Peloponnesians brought siege- engines to bear on the wall, one of which greatly alarmed the besieged garrison, by severely shaking their wall of timber and bricks. But this new mode of attack was frustrated, like the rest, by the ingenuity of the Plataeans, who dropped nooses over the ends of the battering-rams, and drew them up just before the moment of impact. Moreover they suspended heavy beams of wood at intervals along the wall, each beam hanging by long chains from two cranes which rested on the wall and projected outwards from it; and whenever ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... well may he be valiant and full of prowess that hath such a sort of noble knights unto his kin, and full like is he to be a noble man that is their leader and governor. He meant it by Sir Launcelot du Lake. So when Sir Tristram had beholden them long he thought shame to see two hundred knights battering upon twenty knights. Then Sir Tristram rode unto the King with the Hundred Knights and said: Sir, leave your fighting with those twenty knights, for ye win no worship of them, ye be so many and they so few; and wit ye well they will not out of the field I ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... professors of the sciences, and, what was as great a departure from Tartar habits, he raised a force of infantry, among his captives (in anticipation of the Janizaries, formed soon after), and he furnished himself with a train of battering engines. More strange still, he gained the Greek Emperor's daughter in marriage, a Christian princess; and lastly, he crossed over into Europe under cover of friendship to the court of Constantinople, and possessed himself of Gallipoli, the key of the Hellespont. His successors gained first Roumelia, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... soon for me to look to my own part; for my head was scarce back at the window, before five men, carrying a spare yard for a battering-ram, ran past me and took post to drive the door in. I had never fired with a pistol in my life, and not often with a gun; far less against a fellow-creature. But it was now or never; and just ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... entrance to the archway was suspended a portcullis of wrought-iron bars. This was the real barrier, for, even if the attacking party succeeded in battering down the outer gate, they would find themselves cooped up in the passageway and exposed to missiles discharged both through the grating and from trap-doors in the vaulted ceiling. A well-conceived theory of defence, but its present practice ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... at Marybone and Hockley-in-the-Hole, and after a gasp for breath and a glare over his bleeding nose at his enemy, he dashed forward his head as though it had been a battering-ram, intending to project it ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... men at more than that distance, Sire, but for battering down walls they are used at shorter distances. The ships are, as you say, floating castles, and will carry hundreds of men, with provisions and stores for many months, besides merchandise and goods. These castles are armed with ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... Mournful silence pervaded the hall. A more sorrowful, heart-rending sight mortal eyes have seldom seen. The father, the mother, the saint-like sister, the innocent and helpless children, had found but a momentary refuge from cannibals, who were roaring like wolves around the hall, and battering at the doors to break in and slake their vengeance with blood. It was seriously apprehended that the mob would make a rush, and sprinkle the blood of the royal family upon the very floor of the sanctuary where they had ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... their missiles with far more freedom and variety of range than they could shoot through the oblique but immovable loopholes of the curtain, or even through the sloping crenelets of the higher towers. On this the besiegers brought up mangonels, and set them hurling huge stones at these woodworks and battering them to pieces. Contemporaneously they built a triangular wooden tower as high as the curtain, and kept it ready for use, and just out ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... with many other diverse forms of luxuriant foliage, had completely changed the aspect of the country. The men were glad to wear the suits of drill and the sun-helmet which had now been issued. Thus May merged into June; the fourth great German attack was battering at the gates of Compiegne, but the Italian front had as yet given no sign. On our next visit, however, to the line, it became known that a British offensive was to be launched in the middle of June. The usual conferences and rehearsals took place; ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... of arrogant superiority was unbearable. Diane's self-control wavered under it and broke. She turned and upbraided him despairingly, alternately pleading and reproaching, battering all her slender forces ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... they laboured, but all in vain. The massive timbers of hard wood, six inches or more in thickness, could scarcely be touched by their knives and spears, nor might their united strength serve even to stir the stone bolts and bars that held them fast, and they had nothing that could be used as a battering-ram. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... all he considered, excepting a passionate hatred engendered by one of those faces he had just seen. They were upon him in mass, striking, tearing like so many wild beasts in the first fierceness of attack. His revolver jammed in its holster, but he struck out with clenched fists, battering at the black figures, his teeth ground together, his every instinct bidding him fight hard till he died. Once they pounded him to his knees, but he struggled up, shaking loose their gripping hands, and hurling them back ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... we reached the cliff yonder, where are many caves very wonderful, as I will show you, Martin. And then I saw the reason of this haste, for the greatest Spanish ship was turning to bring her whole broadside to bear, and so began to shoot off all their cannon, battering our poor ship as you see. Then came Spaniards in boats with fire to burn it, but our men shot so many of these that although they set the ship on fire, yet they did it so hastily because of our shooting that once they were gone, the fire was ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... Highlanders, a wilful creature, stopped all at once; and though he won the half-mutchkin by getting through first, after driving over the tollman, it was at the expense of poor Robbie's being ejected from his stirrups like a battering-ram, and disappearing headforemost through the toll-house window, which was open, hat, wig, green umbrella, and all—the tollman's wife's bairn making a providential escape from Robbie landing on all-fours, more than two ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... like flails, making head-long, bull-like rushes, the Butterfly Man managed to send him sprawling again. Then he himself caught one well-aimed blow, and went staggering; but before slow-moving and raging Jan could follow up his advantage, with a lightning-like quickness the Butterfly Man made a battering ram of his head, caught Jan in the pit of the stomach, and even as he fell Jan went down, too, and went down underneath. Desperately, fighting like a fiend, John Flint kept him down. And presently using every wrestler's trick that he knew, and bringing to ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... voice trembled. They hid their eyes for a moment. They could not bear to look down, for the wave had broken on the face of the town, sweeping over the quays and docks, overwhelming the great storehouses and factories, tearing gigantic stones from forts and bridges, and using them as battering rams against the temples. Great ships were swept over the roofs of the houses and dashed down halfway up the hill among ruined gardens and broken buildings. The water ground brown fishing-boats to powder on the ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... oak, So fierce a shock unable to withstand, Admits the sea: in at the gaping side The crowding waves gush with impetuous rage Resistless, overwhelming; horrors seize The mariners; Death in their eyes appears, They stare, they lave, they pump, they swear, they pray (Vain efforts!) still the battering waves rush in, Implacable, till, delug'd by the foam, The ship sinks foundering in the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... was a morning calculated to inspire good-will and heartiness in a human being it was that morning. The dawn came swiftly, battering through a fleece of clouds and painting the Blue Mesa in all the gorgeous and utterly indescribable colors of an Arizona sunrise. The air was crisp and so clear that it seemed to sparkle, like water. Andy White whistled as he gathered up the blankets and ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... my will. But did he? He said it would interest me to see the siege of Antwerp, and I said it wouldn't. I said with the most perfect sincerity that I'd die rather than go anywhere near the siege of Antwerp, or of any other place. And now the siege-guns from Namur are battering the forts of Antwerp, and down there the armies are gathering towards the second Waterloo, and the Commandant was right. I am extremely interested. I would die rather than go back ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o'ersways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O! how shall summer's honey breath hold out, Against the wrackful siege of battering days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays? O fearful meditation! where, alack, Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? O! none, unless this ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... no intention of being devoured in this summary fashion. They resumed their tireless, whirlwind attack like giants refreshed, and so harried their Yale foemen that they were forced to their utmost to ward off another touchdown. This incessant battering dulled the edges of their offensive tactics, and they seemed unable to set in motion a consistent series of advances. But the joy of Princeton was tempered by the knowledge that this, her dearest enemy, was not beaten until the last ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... with its camp stove and store of supplies; and the big bateau, with its thousand feet of inch and a half manila line coiled for instant use, whose thick, flaring sides and floor of selected timber were built to override the shock and battering of a thousand pitching logs—were carried to ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... head out of the door of the hut, his face did not display merriment. Day was breaking; yet he could see nothing but the flying scud and the dim outline of the shore; he could hear nothing but the roar of the breakers, battering the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... by the spring thaws and rains, the two flanking channels divided at the foundations of the house, and rustled away through the narrow paths of the small bridges to the rapids. You could stand at any window in the House and watch the ugly, rushing current, gorged with logs, come battering at the wall, jostle between the piers, and race on to the rocks and the dam and the slide beyond. You stepped from the front door upon the wall, which was a road between the bridges, and from the back ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... nature, felt in the quiet dusk the power to do all things. He had the poetic temperament which sometimes leads on to great things, and the man so gifted who does not feel himself capable, at that hour of the day of rest, of battering down Gibraltar or of upbuilding the whole human race, must account himself ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... all the blind, fighting spirit which, in gridiron days, had driven him with clinched teeth into the thick of the battering melee. He sprang into a crouching posture, face turned toward the taunting sound, every muscle taut, every nerve tingling, and with but one thought surging through his brain—the desire to charge back and attack ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... steel. He turned one thrust, turned another, turned another. Then suddenly he went forward at the lunge with his whole living weight. Turnbull leaped back, but Evan lunged and lunged and lunged again like a devilish piston rod or battering ram. And high above all the sound of the struggle there broke into the silent evening a bellowing human voice, nasal, raucous, at the highest pitch of pain. "Help! Help! Police! Murder! Murder!" The gag was broken; and the tongue of ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... been idle while he waited for his message to reach Yasmini, but had sent some of the guard to find a baulk of timber for a battering-ram. The butts of rifles would have been ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... out in a state of alarm. The monster had slipped from the house and was battering down ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... shelter beneath a tree at a time like this?" but the instinct of self-preservation drove them there to escape the terrible battering of the rain and the ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... well-mounted men, had made a dash for freedom when he found the place was getting too hot, and had been promptly tackled by Broadwood when he got outside. Pursuer and pursued vanished into the blue distance of the veldt, battering each other as they went, like birds that fight and fly at the same time. Broadwood, however, had got hold of his enemy by the wrong end. What happened exactly we don't know, but De Wet got clear somehow, and immediately turned his attention ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... and mountain-snows Predominates, and darkness comes and goes, 180 And the fierce torrent, at the flashes broad Starts, like a horse, beside the glaring road— She seeks a covert from the battering shower In the roofed bridge [N]; the bridge, in that dread hour, Itself all trembling at the torrent's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... The Hyppe is the berye of the sweet bryer or eglantine. Nowell meaneth more than Christmas. Porpherye is a peculiar marble, not marble in common. Sendale, a sylke stuffe. The trepegett is not the battering-ram, but an engine to cast stones. Wiuer or Wyvern, a serpent like unto a dragon. Autenticke meaneth a thing of auctoritye, not of antiquitye. Abandone is not liberty though Hollyband sayeth so. ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... could interfere, beat at the delirious wretch with their oars. He hung on tenaciously, enduring a perfect avalanche of blows. But mere flesh and bone had to wither under that onslaught, and at last, by sheer weight of battering, he was driven from his hold, and the beer-colored river covered ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... calm as it ever gets," was the inspector's unmoved reply. "You ought to see Tillamook when it's rough weather! I've seen it with a real gale blowing, when it seemed impossible that the rock could stand up five minutes against the terrific battering. Yet it just stands there and defies the Pacific at its worst, as it has, I suppose, for a hundred thousand years or more, and the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Corinto, a small coast town in Salvador. Every ship that entered the harbour was sure to have some bloodthirsty fiend on board to empty his cartridges into this unfortunate creature. His carcass was reckoned to be as full of lead as a careful housewife's pin-cushion of pins. But all this battering had no effect on him. Finally, and after my own visit to that chief of all yellow-fever-stricken dens, a British gun-boat put a shell into Joe and blew him into smithereens. In many shark-infested waters, such as around Ocean Island, ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... for men to walk along on the top, but being built of clay it would withstand but little battering. Mr. Goodenough set a large number of people to work, making sacks from the rough cloth, of which there was an abundance in the place. These were filled with earth and piled in the center of the town ready for conveyance to any point threatened. He likewise had a number of beams, used in construction ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... and along the littered streets, where men and women and children, thin and haggard and listless with hunger, and the deadly inertia of long confinement, pass and repass as indifferently as though no guns were battering and growling from the low grey hills south and east, and the incessant rattle of rifle-fire were the innocent expenditure of blank cartridge ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... dig you out,' I said, for I was nearly beside myself with joy, as I struck the crowbar like a battering-ram into the wall. You can fancy, John, that I didn't work the worse that Kate was holding the candle ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... joined the group only in time to hear the conclusion of Nello's speech, but he was one of those figures for whom all the world instinctively makes way, as it would for a battering-ram. He was not much above the middle height, but the impression of enormous force which was conveyed by his capacious chest and brawny arms bared to the shoulder, was deepened by the keen sense and quiet resolution expressed in his glance and in every furrow of his cheek and brow. He had often ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Rome after the battle of Lake Trasimene; but he knew that he could not hope to subdue that city so long as she was surrounded by faithful allies. His army was numerically insufficient to undertake such a siege, and was destitute of the machines for battering the walls. Rome was still defended by the city legions, besides which every man capable of bearing arms was a soldier. The bitter hostility of the Latins would have rendered it difficult in the extreme for the army to have obtained ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... of twelve ships of the line, four bomb-galliots, ten or twelve frigates, and several sloops, having crossed the channel, entered the harbour and came to an anchor within half-a-mile of the town. The ships then opened fire, and continued battering away at the place till four in the morning, when they were compelled to come out to prevent grounding. Two successive days they continued doing the same, firing seventy bombs one day, but with frequent intermissions, inducing the inhabitants to believe that they were about ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... whence she could see all that was passing outside. About a dozen of the horsemen were posted around the house; but the remainder, dismounted, had gone to the edge of the woods, and were felling a well-grown sapling, with the evident intention of using it as a battering-ram to break ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... seemed at first consideration to be an impossible task. They were carefully guarded far in the rear of the attacking groups. Blake knew that he had scarcely a chance in a hundred of battering his way through the ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... with the force of a battering-ram, Percy shot over the brink. As he fell he described a partial somersault, landing on hands and knees half-way down the slope. His momentum carried him heels over head, and he rolled and tumbled the rest of the way, bringing up in a heap at ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... to the sound of blows battering the outer door. "They'll have it down in another minute. We've got to burn the ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... completed in the evening, with ranjows stuck round the outer defence. It was excellently situated for battering Balidah; but Balidah, I fear, is too loosely constructed to be battered to the best advantage. During the day the Sow and Singe Dyaks joined, to the amount of about 150 men, and other tribes have been gradually ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... crossed to the door, not merely to find it locked, but to discover that it was not the kind of lock that would yield to blows. There was no way out but by battering away one of the panels, and to this he addressed himself without hesitation, assisted by Balbi, who had armed himself with the bodkin, but who trembled fearfully at the noise of Casanova's blows. There was danger in this, but the danger ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... attacked the place. In the present instance, however, our troops arrived in time to repair the breach before the water had flowed into the fosse sufficiently to render it impassable. After this a few-days were spent in reconnoitring the works, and fixing on the best points of attack, until the whole battering train with its appurtenances should arrive. In the meantime, from a desire to save the women and children from the effects of the terrible bombardment about to take place, Lord Combermere addressed a letter to Doorjun Sal, requesting him to send them out to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... operator who would receive his conge in a manner that was anything but pleasant. Feverishly, I groped around, and all at once my hand came in contact with the Winchester rifle. I grasped it by the barrel, and using it as a battering ram I started to smash that door. The smoke by this time was stifling, suffocating, and already my senses were leaving me,—everything was swimming around before my eyes, but it was a case of life and death, and I hammered away with all my might. Finally, Crash! Ah! I had succeeded, the lock ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... all print Aries in the accusative and with a small a—"poneres lunam in arietem,"—which not at all understanding, I have changed the phrase to what it is in the text. Bracciolini by the Ram is referring neither to the male sheep nor the battering instrument of war among the Romans, but the vernal sign: he had evidently read Roger Bacon, and believed with the "Somersetshire Magician," (as the Brother of the Minor Order was styled by his contemporaries), that a man's neck is subject to the power of the Bull, his arms ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... halting, talk. "Mr. Black was telling me to-day about Mr. White's being appointed to —— what do you call that office?" implored the dignified matron. "Just call it anything, Mrs. Gray, a bandersnatch, or a buttonhook, or a battering-ram," impertinently suggested the glib undergraduate who had been applying these words to everybody and everything, and who continued to do so until she had found a new catchword as the main substance of her conversation. The infirmities of age, as well as the mellowed wisdom of it, deserve ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... moment he was aware of merciless blows raining down upon him, battering him to the earth; he felt suffocated, crushed, more utterly helpless and powerless than he had ever done in his life before. Quick thrills of pain were running through him, stars danced before his eyes; and through ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... puffed away at his pipe as if entirely satisfied with his lot. He was still watching the brougham when a surface-car came gliding swiftly around a curve. There was a smash of splintering wood and breaking glass. The car had struck the brougham a battering-ram blow, crushing a rear wheel and snapping the steel ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... the pomp, and parade, and horrors of a siege are as accurately told, as if by one who had been at the sacking of many towns. The author had learnt much in a little time, at the siege of Leicester. All the sad elements of war appear, and make us shudder—masses of armed men with their slings and battering-rams—clarions and shouts—wounded and slain, all appear as in a panorama. The mind becomes entranced, and when sober reflection regains her command, we naturally inquire, Can all this have taken place in my heart? Then the armies of Diabolus, with his thousands of Election Doubters, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... his army by a stay of eight days at Glasgow, Prince Charles set out on the 3rd of January, 1746, for Stirling, where he was joined by Lords John Drummond, Lewis Gordon, and Strathallan, the first named of whom had brought some battering guns and engineers from France. Their following raised the force to nearly nine thousand men — the largest army that Charles mustered during the course of the campaign. The siege of Stirling was at once commenced; but ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... encouraging the youngster, Finn would lower himself to the ground, head well out, and, covering his eyes and muzzle with his two fore legs, would allow Jan to plunge like a little battering-ram upon the top of his head, furiously digging into the wolfhound's wiry coat in futile pursuit of flesh-hold for his teeth, and still exhausting fifty per cent. of his energies ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... knowledge beat down on me, battering me with such blows as I had not felt in my belief that Dick had not been true to me in his affair with this poor girl. Her rivalry, living or dead, I could have endured and overcome—for no Bessie Lowe could ever have won from Dick, as she could never have ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... were battering at the door of the passage in which they were imprisoned. Perhaps he would still have time to reach his motor before they succeeded in breaking down the door. Nevertheless, he preferred to take the same road as Florence and Sauverand, which gave him the hope of saving ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... earth, where we could not easily get at them because of the showers of spears which were rained at anyone who showed himself, they began to undermine it, levering out the bottom stones with stakes and battering them with poles. ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... choes of wine; and that he could play on two trumpets at once; and that it was his habit to sleep on only a lion's skin, and when playing on the trumpet he made a vast noise. Accordingly, when Demetrius the son of Antigonus was besieging Argos, and when his troops could not bring the battering ram against the walls on account of its weight, he, giving the signal with his two trumpets at once, by the great volume of sound which he poured forth, instigated the soldiers to move forward the engine with great zeal ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was first brought to light in the world than how any good thing could ever be produced out of an House of Commons so constituted, unless as that is imagined to have come from the rushing of trees, or battering of rocks together, by accident, so these, by their clashing with one another, have struck out an useful effect from so unlikely causes. But whatsoever casual good hath been wrought at any time by the assimilation of ambitious, factious and disappointed members, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... fine gateway of the once rich and powerful St. Augustine's Abbey; and near it, not many years ago, was a fine example of Saxon work, known as Ethelbert's Tower, which some of the intelligent busybodies of the time had removed with a battering-ram. ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... continued without diminishing. He struggled once more to his feet, with Nicholas, and they exchanged battering blows, dealt necessarily at random. Sometimes his arm swept violently through mere space, at others his fist landed with a satisfying shock on the body of his antagonist. The dark was occasionally crossed by ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... favourite pastime, whenever his mother's back was turned, was to build walls and houses of herrings; and he would also play at soldiers on the marble slab, arranging the red gurnets in confronting lines, pushing them against each other, and battering their heads, while imitating the sound of drum and trumpet with his lips; after which he would throw them all into a heap again, and exclaim that they were dead. When he grew older he would prowl about his aunt Claire's stall to get ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... so shall it lie," said Wayne's voice out of the darkness, and it had the same sweet and yet horrible air that it had had throughout, of coming from a great distance, from before or after the event. Even when he was struggling like an eel or battering like a madman, he spoke like a spectator. "As the tree falleth, so shall it lie," he said. "Men have called that a gloomy text. It is the essence of all exultation. I am doing now what I have done all my life, what is the only happiness, what is the only universality. I am clinging to something. ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... seems to have maintained a bombardment all round General Herr's lines on February 21, 1916, but this general battering was done with a thousand pieces of field artillery. The grand masses of heavy howitzers were used in a different way. At a quarter past seven in the morning they concentrated on the small sector of advanced intrenchments ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... assured of the general consent to his proposals, said, "If we really wish to carry out what we have set ourselves, we must prepare battering-rams and siege engines, and get together mechanics and builders for our own castles." [21] Thereupon Cyaxares at once undertook to provide an engine at his own expense, Gadatas and Gobryas made themselves responsible for ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... window-panes rattle in a sudden gust. The nor'wester came howling over the dark tree-tops, fell upon the clearing about the little wooden buildings—house, stable, barn—in' squalls and-wicked whirlwinds that sought to lift the roof and smote the walls like a battering-ram, before sweeping onward to the forest in a baffled fury. The house trembled from base to chimneytop, and swayed on its foundation in such a fashion that the inmates, feeling the onslaught, hearing the roar and shriek of the foe, ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... protection against roving freebooters. Larger towns, especially those belonging to warrior chiefs, have high mud-walls, sometimes with loopholes and bastions, and are capable of standing a siege where the enemy has neither cannon nor battering-rams. The gate was made of planks shaped with the axe, for the natives have no saws. The appearance of the place from a distance was very singular, for it consisted of 400 or 500 huts, all built in the same manner, with conical roofs thatched with grass. No chimneys, spires, nor windows ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... towers against the walls. But so strong were the fortifications that the inhabitants were able to stand a siege of eighteen months. At the end of this time they were driven to desperation, and fought with the energy of despair. They could resist battering rams, but they could not resist famine and pestilence. After dreadful sufferings, the besieged found the soldiers of Chaldaea within their Temple, a breach in the walls having been made, and the stubborn city was taken by assault. The few who were spared were carried away captive ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... disappointed, having expected to surprise the house. At any moment a fire might be opened on them. Finding, however, that they were allowed to remain with impunity in front of the house, a party of them rushed up to the door and began battering away with their clubs, hoping to break it open. In addition to the bars, the girls had placed the dining-room table and the heaviest articles of furniture ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... within sight of the spot they found conditions precisely as they had expected. A large male was battering frantically against the steel wires of the cage that held him captive. Upon the outside several hundred other baboons were tearing and tugging in his aid, and all were roaring and jabbering and barking at the ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... purely political, would prove to be a moral revolution. The social class to which she belonged, not being able, during its unhoped-for triumph in the fifteen years of the Restoration to reconstruct itself, was about to go to pieces, bit by bit, under the battering-ram of the bourgeoisie. She heard the famous words of Monsieur Laine: 'Kings are departing!' This conviction, I believe was not without its influence on her conduct. She took an intellectual part in the new doctrines, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... hour that La Corriveau emerged from the gloomy woods of Beauport, on her return to the city, the night of the murder of Caroline, two horsemen were battering at full speed on the highway that led to Charlebourg. Their dark figures were irrecognizable in the dim moonlight. They rode fast and silent, like men having important business before them, which demanded haste; ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... relieved to find their impressions boldly put into form for them by him. Not one of them has understood anything. Walther's unprecedented leaping to his feet in the heat of inspiration has given offence to this one; the other terms his singing "empty battering at the ear-drums." They are about to subscribe unanimously to Beckmesser's verdict that he has lost his case, when Sachs's voice breaks in upon the confusion. He has listened to Walther in complete self-forgetful absorption. The ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... became hated with a deadly hatred. He was an active explorer, and did much to open up the interior country, till at length, on a trip in which he was accompanied only by some convicts, they glutted their vengeance by spearing him and battering his head ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... brought the stolid youth back to power—an honour he did not wish. He hit the next ball softly back to the bowler. Eight for 111; and Cunjee howling steadily, with all its youth, and some of its beauty, battering with sticks on tins. A dog ran across the ground, and was greeted with a yell that made it scurry away in terror, its tail concealed between its legs. Just then Cunjee ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... must be either round or polygonal. Square towers are sooner shattered by military engines, for the battering rams pound their angles to pieces; but in the case of round towers they can do no harm, being engaged, as it were, in driving wedges to their centre. The system of fortification by wall and towers may be made safest by the addition of earthen ramparts, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... desolation. Here, as in all the neighboring region, are plainly visible the terrible effects of the great freshet of October 1st, 1856. We were told that, in the vicinity of this fall, neither the heavy rain nor the rushing waters could for a time be heard, only the rattling and battering of stones, as if the Titans had again taken to pelting the poor earth with whatever of rock and bowlder they could lay their hands upon. The State dam at the outlet of the lower Au Sable broke down, and the freed lake rushed out through the valley, over the meadows, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and his lifetime of battering about the world, Captain Cy had a sentimental streak in his makeup; his rejuvenation of the old home proved that. Betsy's letter interested him. He had made guarded inquiries concerning Mary Thayer, now Mary Thomas, of others besides Asaph, and ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... rush like battering-rams, even against infantry, men and horses ought to be watered and fresh (Ponsomby's cavalry at Waterloo). If there is ever contact between cavalry, the shock is so weakened by the hands of the men, the rearing of the horses, the swinging ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... new relations of that fop Brummel's reply to the gentleman who offered him his carriage in a shower, "But where will you ride, then?"—and what accusing silences, and what searching and irresistible speeches, battering down all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... likeness of their old favorite; all declared that Caesar was his worthy successor. The nobles were filled with anger and fear. Catulus, who was their leader, accused Caesar in the Senate. "This man," he said, "is no longer digging mines against his country, he is bringing battering-rams against it." The Senate, however, was afraid or unwilling to act. As for the people, it soon gave the young man a remarkable proof of its favor. What may be called the High Priesthood became vacant. It was an honor commonly given to some aged ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... punch, thump, pelt, kick, punce^, calcitration^; ruade^; arietation^; cut, thrust, lunge, yerk^; carom, carrom^, clip [Slang], jab, plug [Slang], sidewinder [U.S.], sidewipe^, sideswipe [U.S.]. hammer, sledge hammer, mall, maul, mallet, flail; ram, rammer^; battering ram, monkey, pile-driving engine, punch, bat; cant hook; cudgel &c (weapon) 727; ax &c (sharp) 253. [Science of mechanical forces] dynamics; seismometer, accelerometer, earthquake detector. V. give an impetus &c n.; impel, push; start, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the devil's got into you? What business have you got with me, old fellow? What are you pounding me for? What are you jerking me along for? What do you mean by battering me? ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... depended. The mill had been stripped of all smaller stuff, and its dynamos had been chipped with an ax until the copper windings showed frayed and useless. The shoes of the huge stamps were worn down to a thin, uneven rim, battering on broken surfaces. The Venners rattled on their foundations, and the plates had been scarred as if by a chisel in ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... with the organic world. By day or night no ant or other edible thing seemed ever to approach or be entrapped; and month after month there was no sign of change to imago. Yet each pit held a fat, enthusiastic inmate, ready at a touch to turn steam-shovel, battering-ram, bayonet, and gourmand. Among the first thousand-and-one mysteries of Kartabo I give a place to the source of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... great sheet of ice came gaily floating on the swift current, caught against the corner of the house, and stuck there, banging, grinding, and jarring with the movements of the swirling water, and threatening to beat the house down like a battering ram. At the same moment they heard a cry for help from inside the house, and the woman on the far bank shouted and gesticulated more wildly than before, while the whole structure groaned and shivered like a creature ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... by the royal intendant. It was still a place of considerable strength, standing on the crest of a hill. It had been kept in a good state of repair by the intendant, and could offer a stout resistance to anything short of an army provided with a powerful battering train. On making a tour of the estate Hector found that here, as throughout France, an immense amount of distress existed, owing to the crushing taxation rendered necessary by the war; he made minute inquiries of the intendant of the circumstances of ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... comes the vintage, and all its classic revelries. A happy folk—under a happy clime; which yet has its drawbacks, like all climes on earth. Terrible thunderstorms sweep over it, hail-laden, killing, battering, drowning, destroying in an hour the labours of the year; and there are ugly mistral winds likewise, of which it may be fairly said, that he who can face an eight days' mistral, without finding his life a burden, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... huge cross-bow, the catapults showered stones to a great distance; the ballista discharged flights of darts and arrows. There were many other varieties of stone-throwing machinery; "the war-wolf" was long the chief of projectile machines, as the ram was of manual forces. The power of a battering-ram of the largest size, worked by a thousand men, has been proven to be equal to a point-blank shot from a thirty-six pounder. There were moveable towers of all sizes and of many names: "the sow" was a variety which continued in use in England and Ireland till the middle of the seventeenth ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... happened, only that my arms were going like windmills, that I was battering Courtenay, and that he was battering me; that we were down, and then up, and then down again, over and over, and fighting fiercely as a couple ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... bull. Twice and three times, and the blood leaped out over Glaucon's fair skin. Again—the rush of blood was almost blinding. Again—Pytheas screamed with agony—the Athenian's clutch seemed weakening. Again—flesh and blood could not stand such battering long. If Lycon could endure this, there was only one end to ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... human understanding, remain, though all theologies may be in doubt. If the idea of Providence be a superstition, why should not man guide his life by good sense and moderation? Bayle did not attack existing beliefs with the battering-ram: he quietly removed a stone here and a stone there from the foundations. If he is aggressive, it is by means of a tranquil irony. The errors of human-kind are full of curious interest; the disputes of theologians are both curious and amusing; the moral licences of men and ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... believe they'll give in soon. If they had any cartridges they would have had every man of us in that last rush. Let's try another dodge. Here goes for a battering-ram, Dick!' ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... died on his lips, for at that instant a rapid stride was heard without—a momentary scuffle—voices in altercation;—the door gave way as if a battering ram had forced it;—not so much thrown forward as actually hurled into the room, the body of Dykeman fell heavily, like a dead man's, at the very feet of Lord Lilburne—and Philip Vaudemont stood in ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
