"Hand-to-hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... main garrison. Well, for runners or scouts they may answer, but for hand-to-hand action, they are naught. But where ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... to find fault with my mild temper: 'I would not put up with this! I would not put up with that.' If I had listened to her, Monsieur le Prsident, I should have had at least three hand-to-hand fights a month...." ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... bully placed himself before me and spat in my face. In a moment my calmness and self-control were gone, and in a minute more we were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight. The devil that my hatred for my brother had aroused now showed itself, and I fought with all the fury of a demon. My opponent was as big as I, and as strong, or would have been had he not abused his strength by evil habits; ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... other than the revolver, had been found; and it was evidently not heavy enough to produce such a wound. There must, then, necessarily, have been a hand-to-hand struggle between the pretended soldier and the murderer; and the latter, seizing his adversary by the throat, had dashed him violently against the wall. The presence of some very tiny but very numerous spots of extravasated blood about the neck ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... killed while on the log. But death had no terrors to that army. The centre and rear divisions pressed up to support the front and fill the gaps; and all equally shared the glory of the hour. Enough survived the terrible passage to bring the Indians to a hand-to-hand fight within the fort. After a desperate struggle of nearly three hours, the savages were driven from their stronghold; and, with the setting of that sun, their power was broken. Philip's fortunes had received a decided overthrow, and the colonies were saved. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... archers, rode for Newcastle and Durham, with James Earl of Douglas for one of their leaders. These were already pillaging and burning in Durham when the Earl of Northumberland first heard of them, and sent against them his sons Henry and Ralph Percy. In a hand-to-hand fight between Douglas and Henry Percy, Douglas took Percy's pennon. At Otterburn the Scots overcame the English but Douglas fell, struck by three spears at once, and Henry was captured in fight by Lord Montgomery. There was a Scots ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... thrilling hand-to-hand conflicts, the three greatest during the eighteen days' battle being between Karna and the eldest Pandav, between the eldest Kuru and Bhima, and between Karna and Arjuna. During the first sixteen days of battle, countless men were slain, including ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... though I was very little content. What earthly chance stood I against a lithe young brave, accustomed from his childhood to war? I thought of a duel hand-to-hand with knives or tomahawks, for I could not believe that I would be allowed to keep my pistols. It was a very faint-hearted combatant who rose and staggered after Onotawah into the clear morning. The cloudy weather had gone, ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... With the pistol he could bury two or three balls in the body of the redskin before he could suspect where they came from, and thus completely clear the path before him. But there were doubts in the way. The revolver might miss fire, in which case all hope would be gone. In a hand-to-hand tussle the Apache would be more than a match for a dozen such lads. True, the weapon had not failed when he pulled the trigger in the cave, but there was no certainty that it would not do so ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... that even McGurk would try to rush a hostile house, but they took no chances. The guns of Jim Boone were given a thorough overhauling, and he wore as usual at his belt the heavy-handled hunting knife, a deadly weapon in a hand-to-hand fight. Thus equipped, they left him and took ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... present management at least—been considered one of the most important, if not the most important means of grace and spiritual enlightenment. The power of sustained attention and consecutive thought is greatly lacking in all untrained minds; hence the superiority of the hand-to-hand question-and-answer method of the class-room over the sermon as a means of informing the mind and clearing away the rubbish of superstition and the misapprehensions of meaning, derived from the ignorant preachers who have been in many cases ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... good fellow, Beorn, and I could wish for no better to hold a shield over me in the day of battle or to stand back to back with me in a hand-to-hand fight." ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... in course of his approach to Kenneth, who was in the hottest of the fight, and who, seeing Gillespic coming in his direction, advanced to meet him, killing, wounding, or scattering any of the Macdonalds that came in his way. He made a signal to Gillespic to advance and meet him hand-to-hand, but, finding him hesitating, Kenneth, who far exceeded him in strength while he equalled him in courage, would brook no tedious debate but pressed on with fearful eagerness, at one blow cut off Gillespic's ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... men on the ship of Ulysses armed themselves, and Neoptolemus, in the splendid armour of his father, was the first to leap ashore. The Greeks could not come from the wall to welcome him, for they were fighting hard and hand-to-hand with Eurypylus and his men. But they glanced back over their shoulders and it seemed to them that they saw Achilles himself, spear and sword in hand, rushing to help them. They raised a great battle-cry, and, when Neoptolemus reached the battlements, he and Ulysses, and Diomede ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... continued to keep his hand on Cuthbert's shoulder, whereupon the young man flung it aside. At the same moment Jennings closed with him, and a hand-to-hand struggle ensued. Maraquito, with straining eyes, watched the fight. With stiffened muscles the two reeled across the room. Cuthbert was almost too amazed to fight. That Jennings should accuse him ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... the Heart-o'-Oak war, Moored long in haven where the old heroes are, Never on you did the iron-clads jar! Your open deck when the boarder assailed, The frank old heroic hand-to-hand then availed. ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... but momentary. The troops instantly rallied, and before those cruel guns, or even all the rifles, could be reloaded, the Chinese were among the rebels, the cold steel got to work, and a scene of sanguinary, relentless, hand-to-hand fighting ensued, the memory of which was to remain with Frobisher for many a long day. Before the end was reached he could no longer bear to look on, but, climbing down from his perch, seated himself on the floor and covered his face ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... temporarily put to flight by Amurack's daughter, Iphigena, and her band of Amazons; but, smitten with sudden love, he turns to offer his hand and heart on the battlefield. She spurns his overtures, and a very ungallant hand-to-hand combat follows, in which he proves victor and drives his lovely foe to flight in her turn. The conquest is complete, and with all his enemies captives Alphonsus carries things with a high hand, threatening to add Amurack's head to those on his canopy unless that monarch consent ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... one of the most desperate, hand-to-hand struggles, in which the two flag-officers had ever been engaged; and, as it afforded them the means of exhibiting their personal gallantry, when quite young men, both usually looked back upon the exploit with great self-complacency; ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and a great hunter in her day, were my constant companions. Martha Washington understood my signs, and I seldom had any difficulty in making her do just as I wished. It pleased me to domineer over her, and she generally submitted to my tyranny rather than risk a hand-to-hand encounter. I was strong, active, indifferent to consequences. I knew my own mind well enough and always had my own way, even if I had to fight tooth and nail for it. We spent a great deal of time in the kitchen, kneading dough balls, helping make ice-cream, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... ensued was frightful to behold. Most of the men wielded clubs of enormous size and curious shapes, with which they dashed out each other's brains. As they were almost entirely naked, and had to bound, stoop, leap, and run in their terrible hand-to-hand encounters, they looked more like demons than human beings. I felt my heart grow sick at the sight of this bloody battle, and would fain have turned away, but a species of fascination seemed to hold me down and glue my eyes upon the combatants. I observed that the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... I have to say, but others agree with me in this, among them being United States District Attorney Sims, who has written much on the subject of white slavery. One reason for reaching this conclusion comes from the personal hand-to-hand and heart-to-heart touch with these girls themselves. The country girl is more open to the enticements of city life, being more truthful, perfectly innocent and unsuspecting of those whose business it is to seek their prey from girls ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... parent birds had heard the cries of their little ones and come to their rescue. They were chasing us, while we followed the birds. It was really a perilous encounter! Our strong bows finally gained the victory in a hand-to-hand struggle with the angry cranes; but after that we hardly ever hunted a crane's nest. Almost all birds make some resistance when their eggs or young are taken, but they will seldom attack ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... and then they were in the midst of the battle. And yet not exactly in the midst, for the actual conflict was rather of longer distance than that. Hand-to-hand fighting had not yet occurred. But they advanced, firing as they rushed on, not in close formation, for that offered too good a target, but separated. They would fire, rush on, drop to earth, rise again, fire and rush on. And ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... side. Cavalier, to avoid recognition, threw off his uniform, and assumed the guise of a simple Camisard. Again he sought to force his way through the masses of the enemy. His advance was a series of hand-to-hand fights, extending over some six miles, and the struggle lasted for nearly the entire day. More than a thousand dead strewed the roads, of whom one half were Camisards. The Royalists took five drums, sixty-two horses, and ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... gap thus made, quickly poured a stream of Lane's men, thus taking both Berry's and Williams's lines in reverse. The Second Brigade was compelled to change front to meet this new attack: Mott was instantly thrown forward to fill the interval; and after a desperate hand-to-hand struggle he regained the lost ground, and captured eight stands of colors and about a thousand prisoners. This separated Archer from the main line, and took in their turn McGowan and Lane in reverse, precipitately driving them back, and enabling our columns ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... were driven forth violently when the operator pushed a thumb lever, releasing the gas in a cartridge contained in the handle. The blades snapped forth with enough force to break a bubble or to cut through a space suit. They were designed for the sole purpose of space hand-to-hand combat. ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... as severe in its hand-to-hand struggle and toll of life as Fredericksburg or Antietam, in the American Civil War—yet in this vast conflict only an incident, chronicled as "progress" in the official reports—such was the battle of Soissons. It was the most terrific and the most bitterly contested of ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... about what happened in the building. His one thought was to get away, for he fully realized that in a hand-to-hand encounter he would be no match for ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... and strong. He had been engaged in many a desperate hand-to-hand encounter, though never in anything resembling this. Finding the grip on his hair and ankle could not be shaken off, he snatched out his keen-pointed knife with the intention of striking one of his vicious ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... Three times were Gerard's men driven back by the volleys of the Prussians holding Ligny. But the French cannon open fire with terrific effect. Roofs crumble away, and buildings burst into flame. Once more the French rush to the onset, and a furious hand-to-hand scuffle ensues. Half stifled by heat, smoke, and dust, the rival nations fight on, until the defenders give way and fall back on the further part of the village behind the brook; but, when reinforced, they rally as fiercely as ever, and drive the French over ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the men, an old Indian hunter, burnt by the sun to living bronze, and scarred by the many hand-to-hand conflicts he had had with the red savages, leaped from his horse, his keen eyes fastened to the ground, read the signs which the outlaws had left as if ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... fortress castle in which the villain has the fair heroine shut up in that turret room. The invaders, having made a breach in the walls and swarmed over in various places, will now pursue the few desperate defenders of the castle through this passage; and that, with many a desperate hand-to-hand fight. Always the knight in armor is seen hewing his way steadily through all opposition, with one object in view. Of course this is to meet the scoundrel, and finish him, which he eventually does ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... almost invariably produce in my brain mental phenomena of a pugnacious character, which are nothing modified by palace cars and steel rails. This particular night there was a perfect revelry of dreams in my brain. I was on the frontier with our corps, engaged in a glorious hand-to-hand conflict with men our equals in number and valor. We were having the best of it, giving it to them hot and heavy, crash! through the beggars' skulls, and plunge! into their abominable abdominal regions. "No quarter!" It was a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... them. King Henry the Seventh, as the report goeth, commanded all such curs to be hanged, because they durst presume to fight against the lion, who is their king and sovereign. The like he did with an excellent falcon, as some say, because he feared not hand-to-hand match with an eagle, willing his falconers in his own presence to pluck off his head after he was taken down, saying that it was not meet for any subject to offer such wrong unto his lord and superior, wherein he had a further meaning. But if King ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... have drawn his knife, he would have stood a better chance in that hand-to-hand conflict. But there was no time now for such tactics as those. Besides, even in close fight with a bloodthirsty savage, an English gentleman's sense of fair play never for one moment deserts him. Felix felt, if they were to fight it out face to face for their lives, they should fight at least ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... clubmen and spearmen were bludgeoning and stabbing at the close-packed Red Bones, leaping in, killing, springing back and onward with terrible efficiency. Beyond these a thin but deadly line of bowmen poured arrows in high-looping curves over the heads of the hand-to-hand combatants, the shafts whizzing far up, turning, and plunging down unerringly into the center of the enemy force. Each of those arrows could, and many did, end the lives of two or three adversaries by gouging ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... avenge himself on those who had tried to take him captive. A band of armed men was sent down, and the forest swept clear of the marauders—at least for a while. Will Ives had his wish, and met Simon Dowsett face to face in a hand-to-hand struggle; and although the latter did all to deserve his undesirable sobriquet, he was overpowered at last and slain, and his head carried in triumph to his native village, where, after the savage custom of the day, it was exposed on a pike on ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... I have described Larry's hand-to-hand encounter with the cripple; mine was much the same; I was a child in his grip. But with his weapon useless, and Larry rushing into the room, Tugh must have felt that for all his strength and fighting skill he would be worsted in this encounter. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... of good natural abilities, though of not much education, and after half an hour's conversation with him one would say, unhesitatingly, that he deserved a better fate than his hand-to-hand struggle with poverty. But he was one of those men who, for some unaccountable reason, never get on in the world. They can do a great many things creditably, but do not have the knack of conquering fortune. So Hiram had always ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... all deference, agree to any of these suggestions. They involve hand-to-hand fighting over this baby's body. No one of us is entitled to take charge of him. Else why did we all unite to rescue him from the nunnery? He will be torn to pieces among contending divines! I think a purely secular education is all that as a committee we should aim at. ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... and advanced towards me, apparently with the intention of making an end of me. I raised the heavy bat, and looked him steadfastly in the eye. I was the cooler of the two, and the experience I had had in a hand-to-hand fight with Mr. Parasyte gave me both courage and ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... The only hand-to-hand conflicts took place on the afternoon of June 10th. A full thousand soldiers were killed—and possibly six or eight of the Robots. The troops were ordered away after that; they made lines across the island to the north and to the south, to keep the enemy from ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... swiftly, Scampered off in each direction, Struggling, seeking to escape them, Fleeing from the Regimentals. Dunlap found himself confronted By a single Lincoln Cornstalk, (Dr. Huffman, a "Militia,") Who essayed at once to take him. Hand-to-hand in duel comic, They careered with flintlocks rusty, They embraced with bayonets blunted, Dunlap all the while retreating, Huffman all the while pursuing, Till a wide ravine arrested, Stopped their wild, ferocious progress. Not for long the pause, ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... attack, and returning the fire with one withering volley, were ordered to charge. Scarcely were the bayonets lowered, when the head of the advancing column broke and fled, while Mackenzie's brigade, overlapping the flank, pushed boldly forward, and a scene of frightful carnage followed; for a moment a hand-to-hand combat was sustained, but the unbroken files and impregnable bayonets of the English conquered, and the French fled, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... must be crowded to the outside, Browning gave the signal for them to break and make it a hand-to-hand affair. Then ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... ran that Aniello Falcone,[1.4] the painter of battle-pieces, one of the best of Salvator's masters, had been stung into fury and filled with bloodthirsty vengeance because the Spanish soldiers had slain one of his relatives in a hand-to-hand encounter. Without delay he leagued together a band of daring spirits, mostly young painters, put arms into their hands, and gave them the name of the "Company of Death." And in truth this band ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... soldiers, as when the blazing scimitar of Orchan first flashed upon Europe, or Byzantium shook before the thunder of the artillery of Mohammed II. They were still worthy of their father, Osman, the "Bone-breaker;" and, in hand-to-hand combat, an overmatch for the boors of Russia, both in courage and strength. It must be said, to their disadvantage, that they were not very precise concerning the declaration of war; for on the very day it was declared, and without the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... capture impossible and refused to sacrifice his men in a useless attack. Nevertheless the attempt was renewed January 12, when General Alfred Terry had charge of the land forces. The garrison made one of the bravest defences of the whole war, and the hand-to-hand fight was of the most furious character. It lasted for five hours, when the fort was obliged to surrender, the garrison of 2,300 men becoming prisoners of war. It was in this fearful struggle that Ensign "Bob" Evans, who was with ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... few minutes there was a hand-to-hand fight, the Americans using the butt-ends of their muskets, the English their bayonets. The soldiers were exhausted with the climb up the hill and their exertions under a blazing sun, and the great majority of the defenders of the redoubt were, ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... learned of Herkimer's advance and sent the savages under his command to intercept and ambuscade him. A terrible hand-to-hand combat ensued in which a hundred and sixty of the colonists were killed and the loss to the Indians was as great. General Herkimer's horse was shot under him and he himself wounded severely in the leg. Notwithstanding his agony he insisted upon being placed with his back against a tree ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... mean time, our cavalry were engaged in an affair with the enemy's horse, in which we appear to have had the advantage. "The officers gallantly headed their men, and encountered about an equal number of the enemy who advanced to meet them. A hand-to-hand encounter took place, which ended in the Affghan horse retreating to the plain, leaving the hill in our possession. In this affair, Captain Anderson personally engaged and slew the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... single-sticks. The latter are for training in the use of the broadsword or cutlass, the play with which would be too dangerous for ordinary drills. Porter had a strong disposition to resort to boarding and hand-to-hand fighting, believing that the very surprise of an attack by the weaker party would go far to compensate for the inequality of numbers. On more than one occasion already, in the presence of superior force, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... know." It is included in this compilation out of respect to her opinion and also because the boys to whom I have read it said it was "great," The lesson in it is certainly fine. Men who are true men want to settle their own disputes by a hand-to-hand fight, but they will always help each other when a third party or the elements interfere. Humanity ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... sending with a loose jest a girl from the chorus of the Theater des Westens into blushes—and being sent himself in return with a looser. At another (one removed from that of a duo of palpable daughters of joy engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand encounter with a colossal roastbif englisch mit Leipziger allerlei) a family man with his family. At still another, another family man with his. At another, the Salome from the Koenigliches Opernhaus—at another a noted advokat—at another, ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... back. Hand-to-hand fighting for possession of the greatest strategical positions, fought daily, for a time resulted in advantage to neither side. Among the chief objectives of the German attack were two particularly important positions—Hill No 304 (so called to distinguish it from numerous other elevated ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... with feeling he told of the fight for the bridge; how Dick, and Mathews, who had saved him, reached the Americans; of the desperate hand-to-hand fighting; how the groom had guarded his young master; the impending disaster; ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... 561-564 (ed. 1741). An account of the preceding events will be found in La Potherie and Oldmixon; in Jeremie, Relation de la Baie de Hudson; and in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 796-802. Various embellishments have been added to the original narratives by recent writers, such as an imaginary hand-to-hand fight of Iberville and several Englishmen in ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... makes a question of amour propre in attacking his enemies face to face and by preference with the cold steel. Enemies who fall in the general mle by rifle-shot he never considers his "heads;" he claims only those he has killed in hand-to-hand combat. This Albanian was the standard-bearer of his clan, i.e. the hereditary chieftain, and to kill him in hand-to-hand combat was the ambition of the three who attacked him in succession, the shooting from behind being ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... probably would not have beguiled the Scottish leader. The Scots then knelt for a moment of prayer, as the Abbot of Inchafray bore the crucifix along the line; but they did not kneel to Edward. His van, under Gloucester, fell on Edward Bruce's division, where there was hand-to-hand fighting, broken lances, dying chargers, the rear ranks of Gloucester pressing vainly on the front ranks, unable to deploy for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... armour, arms, and the gorgeous velvets, minivers, and brocades of feudal grande tenue. See Mr Edward Corbould. He is sure to be as picturesque and chivalrous as possible. There is the very ring of the rough old times in his caracoling processions of ladies and knights, or his fierce scenes of hand-to-hand fight, with battered armour, and flashing weapons, and wounded men drooping from their steeds. Or he paints softer scenes—passages of silken dalliance and love; ladies' bowers and courtly revels in alcoved gardens. Mr Haghe is equally mediaeval, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... however, swished through air, and the youth smote the chief squarely in the mouth with the back of his fist. He could have used his knife, but he chose to play awhile with this boaster. He delivered his blow so quickly that the Blackfoot, accustomed as he was to fierce hand-to-hand fighting, had no time to dodge or parry, and the next instant the Shawanoe was ten feet away, weapon still grasped, and grinning ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... gangsman. His personal preference is for retreat when it is a question of unpleasantness with a stranger. And, in any case, even when warring among themselves, the gangs exhibit a lively distaste for the hard knocks of hand-to-hand fighting. Their chosen method of battling is to lie down on the ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... any kind of fighting I haven't seen," he declared; "hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets, grenades, gun butts. I've seen 'em on their knees in the mud choking each other, beating each other with their bare fists. I've seen every kind of airship, bomb, shell, poison gas, every kind of wound. Seen whole villages turned into a brickyard ...
— The Deserter • Richard Harding Davis
... fact that I was undoubtedly to make my own living and my own way in the hard hand-to-hand struggle in the shops ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... but more especially in boarding small vessels, there is not much opportunity for what is termed hand-to-hand fighting. It is a rush for the deck; breast to breast, thigh to thigh, foot to foot, man wedged against man, so pressed on by those behind, that there is little possibility of using your cutlass, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Heavy firing began, lasting about five minutes, and over they came again. We opened up heavily with our battery of four guns, throwing a barrage in his front as best we could; mine was the only battery left working on this particular sector. Our fellows went out and met Fritz in a hand-to-hand argument, backing up their contention so thoroughly with the cold steel that they sent him flying back to the line he ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... twenty-five cents a week for each pupil, and opened her school with prayer; after which came a chapter of the Bible, with explanations, and the rules of conduct. Then the A B C class was called, because their recital was a hand-to-hand struggle, requiring ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... we protected, when troopers were clashing, And heroes were dashing; such an earl should be ever, An erst-worthy atheling, as AEschere proved him. The flickering death-spirit became in Heorot His hand-to-hand murderer; I cannot tell whither The cruel one turned, in the carcass exulting, By cramming discovered. The quarrel she wreaked then, The last night igone Grendel thou killedst In grewsomest manner, with grim-holding ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... clutches to a rock. As I fought him, I bettered some verses in my poem, The Woodman;[3] the only thought I gave to letters. Though the kuikui was thick, there was but a small patch of it, and when I was done I attacked the wild lime, and had a hand-to-hand skirmish with its spines and elastic suckers. All this time, close by, in the cleared space of the garden, Lafaele and Mauga were digging. Suddenly quoth Lafaele, "Somebody he sing out."—"Somebody he sing out? All right. I go." And I went and found they had been whistling and "singing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the Indians falling for every Spaniard slain. The artillery had done good work in the early part of the contest, but the fury of the assault had carried the Aztecs up to and over the guns, and only a hand-to-hand conflict remained. The charge of the returning cavaliers created a temporary check, and a feeble rally was made, but the flood of foes soon came on again and ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... ensued a fierce hand-to-hand struggle. The spectators could hardly contain their excitement as they saw their party, fighting doggedly, forced back step by step to the edge of the water. Some, slipping in the ooze of the retreating ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... formidable ship and faster on the wind, forcing Captain Sterling of the Savage to accept the challenge. Disabled aloft very early in the fight, Captain Geddes was unable to choose his position, for which reason they literally battled hand-to-hand, hulls grinding against each other, the gunners scorched by the flashes of the cannon in the ports of the opposing ship, with scarcely room to ply the rammers, and the sailors throwing missiles from the decks, hand grenades, cold shot, scraps ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... some time past the ammunition of the corps that held it had failed, and a dropping irregular musketry was the only reply to the incessant rattle of the enemy. As the smoke cleared away we discovered that the French had carried the position; and as no quarter was given in that deadly hand-to-hand conflict, not one returned to our ranks to toll the tale of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the whole day; it was fiercest on our left flank, where General French and his cavalry charged the positions of the Ermelo and Bethel burghers again and again, each time to be repulsed with heavy losses. Once the lancers attacked so valiantly that a hand-to-hand fight ensued. The commandant of the Bethel burghers afterwards told me that during the charge his kaffir servant got among the lancers and called upon them to "Hands up!" The unsophisticated native had heard so much about ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... boys followed as rapidly as possible in its wake. Presently they came to a small hill. Climbing to the top, they found they could command a good view of the advancing German columns, which they could see in the distance, and which were even now almost close enough to grapple hand-to-hand with the horsemen swooping ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... tests to determine whether or not the shot was fired as the accused claims that it was. The writer can recall at least a dozen cases in his own experience where the story of the defendant, that the revolver was discharged in a hand-to-hand struggle, was conclusively disproved by experimenting with the weapon before the trial. There was one homicide in which a bullet perforated a felt cap and penetrated the forehead of the deceased. The defendant asserted that he was within three feet of his victim when he fired, ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... barely time to load their guns. As they had not pointed them precisely, most of their shot flew over the heads of their opponents, and there had been no time to trice up the boarding nettings. The British were therefore soon alongside; a fierce hand-to-hand conflict commenced with pistols, boarding-pikes, and cutlasses, and the gallant assailants began to climb over her low bulwarks and furiously to attack the enemy with cutlass and pistol. The French crew, though far outnumbering the British, could ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... he covered at an average of twelve and one half miles an hour, including all stops. When the war started, Frey enlisted in the Union army under General Blunt. His short but worthy career was cut short in 1863 when he fell in a hand-to-hand fight with rebel bushwhackers in Arkansas. In this, his last fight, Frey is said to have killed five of his ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... army will work with every other. [24] I will post the javelin-men behind the cuirassiers, and the archers behind them: it would be absurd to place in the van troops who admit that they are not made for hand-to-hand fighting; but with the cuirassiers thrown in front of them they will stand firm enough, and harass the enemy over the heads of our own men with their arrows and their darts. And every stroke that falls on the enemy means ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... he thought of a final dying effort at a hand-to-hand struggle with his captor, but the power of the grip on the back of his neck induced him to abandon that idea in despair. Then he thought of a sudden wrench and a desperate flight, but as that implied the leaving of Snorro to his fate, he abandoned ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... infirm, there lived a great king with a beautiful daughter. See, from the depths of the forest there cometh a giant misshapen, Higher in stature than man, a monster ferocious and shaggy, Boldly demanding a hand-to-hand combat, or kingdom ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... he dashed on the nearest group, followed by all his men, who formed a compact mass; round which the three corps of royal troops closed. Then there was everywhere a hand-to-hand battle there was no time to load and fire; swords flashed and fell, bayonets stabbed, the royals and the Camisards took each other by the throat and hair. For an hour this demoniac fight lasted, during which Cavalier lost five hundred men and slew a thousand of the enemy. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... rifle muzzle about a foot from his head. The German said something which Macalister could not understand, but which he rightly interpreted as a command not to move. But he could hear no sound of Scottish voices or of the uproar of hand-to-hand fighting in the trench. When he saw the Germans duck down hastily and squeeze close up against the wall of the trench, while overhead a string of shells crashed angrily and the shrapnel beat down in gusts across the trench, he diagnosed correctly that the assault had failed, ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... series of trenches, within two hundred yards of the fort. At the word, the former leaped forward on one side and the latter on another. The sailors were repulsed, but the soldiers burst into the fort. The hand-to-hand fight within lasted for hours. Late at night the garrison, hemmed in on all sides, surrendered (January 15, 1865). One knows not which to admire the more, the gallantry of the attack or the heroism ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... slowly. Could he beat the Nipe in hand-to-hand combat? There would be no way of knowing until the final moment ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... The Garibaldian troops had the advantages of superior forces, a greater range of artillery, and sheltered position in the hills, and they pressed with increased courage to the attack. The Germans did not await them quietly but threw themselves on them, so that in many cases it came to a hand-to-hand fight, and serious work was done with bayonets and the butt-ends of rifles. At length the French began to retreat, and the Germans with loud "Hurrahs!" flung themselves after them. But the pursuit was soon abandoned, as they had to withdraw under the fire from the Talant and Fontaine ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Chinese were on the point of taking by storm, when their attention was drawn elsewhere by the arrival of fresh troops led by a Spanish sub-lieutenant. Under the mistaken impression that these were the vanguard of a formidable corps, Sioco sounded the retreat. A bloody hand-to-hand combat followed, and with great difficulty the Chinese collected their dead and regained ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the hand-to-hand strifes, which I stigmatize as murderous. 'The animosity,' said he, 'between the Whigs and Tories renders their situation truly deplorable. The Whigs seem determined to extirpate the Tories, and the Tories the Whigs. Some thousands have fallen in this ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... point, and without any notice whatever, Indians in great numbers sprang up on all sides of the troops, and opened upon them a deadly fire. About half of the men were killed instantly. Finding themselves surrounded, it became with the survivors a question of sauve qui peut. Several desperate hand-to-hand encounters occurred, with varying results, when the remnant of the command made a point down the river, about two miles from the ferry, Captain Marsh being of the number. Here they attempted to cross, but the captain was drowned in the effort. Only from thirteen ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... conviction. She believed him. As an alternative to having nowhere to go, what he offered her was something, and something with that spice of adventure of which she had been dreaming only a few minutes earlier. She couldn't be worse off than she was now, and if it gave her the chance of a hand-to-hand tussle with the world-pride which had never done anything but look down on her, she would be fighting what she held as her worst enemy. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... the North as well as in the South as a female divinity, the fostering mother of all things; and it was owing to climatic difference only that the mythology of the North, where people were daily obliged to conquer the right to live by a hand-to-hand struggle with Nature, should represent her as hard and frozen like Rinda, while the Greeks embodied her in the genial goddess Ceres. The Greeks believed that the cold winter winds swept down from the North, and the Northern races, in addition, added that they were produced by the winnowing of the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... 20, off Dover, had been engaged in an action which stands as one of the glorious achievements at arms in the annals of sea-fighting. The Broke that night was attacked by six German destroyers and, after a battle characterized by bulwark rasping against bulwark, by boarding-parties, hand-to-hand fighting, and all the elements that make the pages of Mayne Reid thrilling, defeated the six destroyers and proceeded ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... were the struggles within gangways so narrow that nothing but daggers could be used, so obscure that the dim lanterns hardly lighted the death-stroke. They seemed the conflicts, not of men but of evil spirits. Nor were these hand-to-hand battles all. A shower of heads, limbs, mutilated trunks, the mangled remains of hundreds of human beings, often spouted from the earth as if from an invisible volcano. The mines were sprung with unexampled ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that the enemies found in advancing, after having driven in our right, enabled our them to rally and to resist. But this resistance was of short duration. Every one had been engaged in hand-to-hand combats; every one was worn out with lassitude and despair of success, and a confusion so general and so unheard-of. The household troops owed their escape to the mistake of one of the enemy's officers, who carried an order ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... spot from which Thor's panting breath seemed to proceed. If he could but batter in that long skull he would be acquitted of responsibility on the ground of self-defense. But he was afraid of anything that approached the hand-to-hand. When it seemed to him that he could vaguely make out the swaying of a figure in the darkness, he hurled the missile with all his might—only to hear it crash into ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... they?" said the officer. "That town has been taken by the Germans five times and lost as many. A few nights ago they got over into the main street and there was terrific hand-to-hand fighting." ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... passed ere the chance came to me for which I had longed— the chance of striking a blow for the emperor. Hand-to-hand with the Russian dragoons on the field of Austerlitz, sweeping along afterwards with the imperial hosts in the full tide of victory, I learnt for the first time the exhilaration of military glory; and I had the good fortune to receive the emperor's favour—not only ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... bridle or clutched at me, their swarthy faces fierce with blood-lust, the eyes that fronted me cruel with passion and inflamed by hate. I heard shots not far away; but we were all too closely jammed to do more than fight in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle with club ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... had ceased as suddenly as it had commenced. I judged that the enemy was storming the city, for the sounds we heard were the sounds of hand-to-hand combat. ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the showy chivalry of his day. He loved the pomp of tournaments; he revived the Round Table of the fabled Arthur; he celebrated his victories by the creation of a new order of knighthood. He had varied the sterner operations of the siege of Calais by a hand-to-hand combat with one of the bravest of the French knights. A naval picture of Froissart sketches Edward for us as he sailed to meet a Spanish fleet which was sweeping the narrow seas. We see the king sitting on deck in his jacket of black ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... one of them had apparently been wounded in one or other of the hand-to-hand combats which they had sustained against the mob earlier in the day, for more than one head was wrapped in a rough piece of bandage and more than one tunic was stained with blood. All the men looked fagged and dirty ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... gallant seamen came as a revolting climax. They stared at each other, white-faced as they thought of the fate that threatened them and all honest men who fell into such ruthless hands. It was Bob's first sight of a hand-to-hand sea-battle, and as the last merchant sailor went down under the howling pack he fainted and tumbled into Jeremy's arms. When he came to his senses again the Yankee boy had propped him up behind the ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... ahead, then?" The sharp bark of rifles, the rat-a-tat of machine guns, the boom of bursting grenades, and the yells, groans, screams and shouts of the hand-to-hand conflict came through the curtaining smoke in a mad ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... "Tactics".—The hand-to-hand fight of the wager of battle with sword and shield, and the fighting in ranks and the wedge-column at close quarters, show that the close infantry combat was the main event of the battle. The preliminary hurling ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... of whisks and bumps; laying the table-cloth as if she were raising the wind, putting down the glasses and salt-cellars as if she were knocking at the door, and clashing the knives and forks in a skirmishing manner suggestive of hand-to-hand conflict. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... about time," Malchus said, joining in the laugh, "considering that I have killed a lion and have taken part in a desperate hand-to-hand fight with the wild Atarantes. I think even my mother must own that I am attaining the dignity ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... not judge by looks, captain," replied the youth quickly,—"especially the looks of a man who has just had a hand-to-hand tussle with a savage. But, to tell the plain truth, Captain Gascoyne, I would indeed rather have had to thank your worthy man John Bumpus than yourself for coming to my aid; for although I owe you no grudge, and do not count you an ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... All his efforts were in vain. Immense stones continued to be hurled upon them as they advanced, bearing men and horse before them; and those who succeeded in forcing their way to the top were met hand-to-hand by the Turks, and cast down headlong upon their companions. Louis himself fought with the energy of desperation, but had great difficulty to avoid falling into the enemy's hands. He escaped at last under cover of the night, with the remnant of his forces, and took up his position ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... possession was recognizable as coming from the poop, the remaining marksmen having preferred to fire wildly from their canoes. But Christobal knew that a deadly struggle was in progress on the fore deck. Tollemache, Frascuelo, and three Chileans were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with nearly a score of savages; the doctor could distinguish the cries of the combatants, the irregular ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... few seconds, whilst his hand lay across her eyes, the lazy, idle fop of fashionable London was fighting a hand-to-hand fight with the bold leader of a band of adventurers: and his own passionate love for his wife ranged itself with fervent intensity on the side of his weaker self. Forgotten were the horrors of the guillotine, the ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the king of the island resides. On the twenty-fifth he went ashore, leaving the master-of-camp aboard the vessels with a guard for the security of the fleet. Marching in the direction of one of the enemy's forts, they came upon an ambuscade in their path. Coming to a hand-to-hand conflict, Captain Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa was wounded in the head by a knife-thrust, and died in two days without regaining consciousness. At this turn of affairs the soldiers, who had disembarked, retired to their ships without avenging ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... the conflicts that take place. During my brief stay I witnessed one of the big battles between two of the stronger tribes. One hundred and fifty thousand men went dashing into an enemy of greater numbers. It was a foot ball melee on a vast scale. Weapons were all of the hand-to-hand type, except the spear wagons which were indeed ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... successor of the noted Corralat), feared that the other had designs that were not peaceable, and commanded that the mouth of the river should be closed; but the sultan of Jolo, offended thereat, dared the other to a personal combat. This challenge was accepted, and the two sultans engaged in a hand-to-hand contest, so fierce that each slew the other; and immediately war was kindled between the two peoples. The Joloans, breaking down the stakes which closed the river, retired to their own island with many weapons and spoils. The new ruler of Mindanao asked aid from the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... ammunition was running low. These experienced and brave, though rascally Indians, soon surmised the cause of this sudden change of affairs. Rallying their forces, they turned upon their assailants in right good earnest and a desperate hand-to-hand engagement ensued. The white men now had an opportunity to use their small arms, which told with such terrible effect upon their foes that they were soon driven back again. They, however, rallied once more and charged so manfully that the trappers were forced to retreat. In this latter ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... lovely bride and sought by force to carry her off. The other Centaurs, following his example, each endeavoured to capture a maiden. Pirithoeus and his followers, aided by Theseus, who rendered most valuable assistance, attacked the Centaurs, and after a violent hand-to-hand struggle in which many perished, forced them to relinquish ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... a respectable reputation for prowess among his associates, and Hutter heard this pledge with a satisfaction that was not concealed. Even the great personal strength of such an aid became of moment, in moving the ark, as well as in the species of hand-to-hand conflicts, that were not unfrequent in the woods; and no commander who was hard pressed could feel more joy at hearing of the arrival of reinforcements, than the borderer experienced at being told this important auxiliary ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... declined, because human strength could not long maintain such exhausting efforts, and consequently tactical movements could continue but for a limited time;[1] and again, during the galley period offensive weapons were not only of short range, but were almost wholly confined to hand-to-hand encounter. These two conditions led almost necessarily to a rush upon each other, not, however, without some dexterous attempts to turn or double on the enemy, followed by a hand-to-hand melee. In such a rush and such a melee a great consensus ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... monosyllable followed the tug of conquest, the blows which were equivalent to a momentary title of possession, all the extremes of a crude, ancestral predilection, of a gallantry inherited from remote forbears of the dark epoch when the club, the stone, and the hand-to-hand struggle were the first ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... not until the 25th that the battle took place. It commenced with an inconclusive archery duel at long range, whereafter the two fleets closed up and a desperate hand-to-hand struggle ensued. Neither side could claim any decisive advantage until Taguchi Shigeyoshi deserted from the Taira and passed over with all his ships to the Minamoto. This Taguchi had been originally an influential magnate of Iyo in Shikoku, whence he had accompanied the Taira retreat to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... empty-handed. The French officers saw that escape was impossible. Neither had they any thought, but for a passing moment, of fighting for their liberty. The Ouvertures were completely armed; and there never was an occasion when a man would lightly engage, hand-to-hand, with Toussaint ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... Scott, so also do Fouque's romances of chivalry[40] remind us of the fantastic tapestries known as Gobelins, whose rich texture and brilliant colors are more pleasing to our eyes than edifying to our souls. We behold knightly pageantry, shepherds engaged in festive sports, hand-to-hand combats, and ancient customs, charmingly intermingled. It is all very pretty and picturesque, but shallow; brilliant superficiality. Among the imitators of Fouque, as among the imitators of Walter Scott, this mannerism of portraying—not ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... traitors had they allowed the war-standard, to which an almost divine worship was paid, to fall into the hands of the enemy; fired by the danger that threatened their honour, and by the religion of arms, from one ship after another they followed him to the fight; in the hand-to-hand combat in the water which ensued they gained the superiority, supported most skilfully by their general wherever it was necessary; the moment they reached the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... I believe I have conquered," thought Dorothy. She sank on her knees by the bedside. She felt worn-out herself. Never before had she nursed a case like this. Never before had she gone through such a hand-to-hand fight with death. The child was far gone when she arrived. The diphtheria was particularly acute, and the poor little frame was already terribly weakened by the sharp attack of ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... of hiding and of shielding themselves from harm. The hostile lines, though about a mile and a quarter in length, were so close together, being never more than twenty yards apart, that many of the combatants grappled in hand-to-hand fighting, and tomahawked or stabbed each other[33] to death. The clatter of the rifles was incessant, while above the din could be heard the cries and groans of the wounded, and the shouts of the combatants, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the capital of a neutral country, is already feeling all the troubles and privations of a besieged city. Prices for foodstuffs have soared to inaccessible heights, as provisions are becoming scarce. Actual hand-to-hand combats are taking place in the streets outside the bakeries for the possession of a loaf of bread, and hungry women with children in their arms are seen crying and weeping with despair. Many merchants, afraid lest the government requisition their goods, hasten to have their orders canceled, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... court lady of the old French regime, but travelling in the wake of the Whirlpoolers under dubious aliases, being sometimes called Good Form and at other The Correct Thing. At present she is having a hand-to-hand encounter with New England Prejudice, a once stalwart old lady of firm will, but now considerably weakened by age and the incessant arguing of ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... are ponderous enough to set their galleys a streak deeper in the water, fancy them in a brisk sea with a nor'wester brewing to windward, watching off the port of Carthage for Admiral Hasdrubal and his fleet to come out. They were good hand-to-hand fighters,—none better; and so they won their victories, no doubt; but, having won them, they dropped sea-going, and made the conquered nations transport their corn and troops, while they went back to their congenial ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... January, 1915, between these forces and the Eleventh Corps of the Turkish army a fierce battle, lasting several days, opened. The struggle was of the utmost intensity, at times developing into a hand-to-hand combat between whole regiments. On January 14 the Fifty-second Turkish Regiment was put to the bayonet by the Russians. At Genikoi a regiment of Cossacks charged, during an engagement with a portion of the Thirty-second Turkish Division, and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... of being very faithful friends, but very bitter enemies. It was said they never forgot a favor, and never forgave an insult. They were cunning rather than brave. It was seldom that an Indian could be induced to meet a foe in an open hand-to-hand fight. But he would track him for years, hoping to take him unawares and to brain him with the tomahawk, or pierce his heart with ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... small arms and cannon opened upon them, to which they paid no attention, but pressed doggedly on. In a moment the boats surrounded the privateer—one on each bow, one on each side, and one under the stern—and the boarders began to swarm up the sides like cats. It was a bloody hand-to-hand contest that followed, in which every weapon, from cutlass and clubbed musket down to bare hands, was employed. Heavy shot, which had been piled up in readiness on deck, were thrown into the boats in an effort to ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... even in Paris, without falling into one of the thousand traps set for him by Fouche. Bruslart arrived at his mistress's house at night, his belt bristling with pistols and poniards, and "always ready for a desperate hand-to-hand fight." ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... other two. Even as his opponent crumpled, they were upon him, coming in from each side. And at least one of them, he could see now, had been in hand-to-hand combat before. In short, another ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... of fashion nowadays: what is wanted is the glorification of every kind of courage. That being so, I hold myself entitled to claim a Military Cross, for my forty-five years of hand-to-hand fighting with Bismarck and with William the Second, and to be mentioned in despatches for ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... While the professor went down into his flooded room to doctor his ankle and attend to his instruments, I raided the slop chest, and armed every man of us with a sheath knife and belt; for while we could not see the creature, we could feel it—and a knife is better than a gun in a hand-to-hand fight. ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... could not carry with it this high bearing. It aspires only to disencumber the route before the march of truth, to prepare the mind, to reform public opinion, to blunt dangerous tools in improper hands. It is in social economy above all, that these hand-to-hand struggles, these constantly recurring combats with popular errors, ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... upon whom the light of yonder crater-fire ever shone—perhaps upon whom the sun ever shone; he had scarcely sixty seconds of time in which to determine whether she should die, or he should take the chance of a terrible death, with a hand-to-hand conflict, a powerful madman for an adversary, certain to confront him should his leap by a miracle prove successful. To have leaped over an abyss of half the width of that one, and then to have met an ordinary adversary, would have been a wonderfully brave deed. He ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... second, I do not think that the Mobiles could stand for days or even for hours against the artillery and musketry force of their opponents. They are individually brave, but like all raw troops they become excited under fire, shoot wildly, then rush forward in order to engage in a hand-to-hand encounter, and break before they reach the Prussian lines. In this respect the troops of the line are not much better. The Prussian tactics, indeed, have revolutionized the whole system of warfare, and the French, until they have learnt them, will ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... made the best show with his little band and clung tenaciously to the battery yet. The Russians came on and on, with stubborn insistence, and all along the line a hand-to-hand fight ensued. Numbers told at length, and the small garrison was slowly forced back, after enduring ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... the Bedouin horsemen were, they felt to break this massive line was impossible. The front line, however, charged well up to the points of the lances, against which they hewed with their sharp scimiters, frequently severing the steel top from the ashpole, and then breaking through and engaging in hand-to-hand conflict with the knights. Behind the latter sat their squires, with extra spears and arms ready to hand to their masters; and in close combat, the heavy maces with their spike ends were weapons before which the ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... and so it came about that at the age of seventeen I ran away with a boy of twenty who worked upon a neighbour's farm. I wanted a home of my own, and Tom had some money saved up. We journeyed to Manitoba, and took out a homestead, where I spent the next twenty years of my life in a hand-to-hand struggle with Nature which seemed simply incredible to Sylvia when I told ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... no question here of risking a hand-to-hand encounter. The Krooboys on board mustered quite fifty head, and most of them were men of enormous physical strength. So the three invaders went into the chart-house, from the ports of which they could command the bridge ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... questions. He gives his opinions confidentially and modestly, and when they are rejected never takes offence. He thinks that a time is coming when the head of the Beaumanoirs should descend into the lists and fight hand-to-hand with any Hodge or Hobson in the cause of his country for the benefit of the Whigs. Too lazy or too old to do this himself, he says to his son, "You must do it: without effort of mine the thing may last my life. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I lit my cigar and started for what I felt was to be the tomb or the forcing-house of all the air-castles I had cherished from boyhood. At last I was to meet the real champion; I was to tussle hand-to-hand with the head of the financial clan, the man of all men best fitted to test to the utmost the skill and quickness which I had picked up in the rough and tumble of a hundred fights on State and Wall streets—Rogers, wary, intrepid, implacable, the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... hundred yards, Ethan and Mickey emerged from the cave, shouting and excited, firing at every red-skin they could see, the Irishman occasionally swinging his gun over his head, and daring the savages to a hand-to-hand encounter. ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... which goad a man to drink and death. While I am proud to belong to a farmers' club and "change works" with a hearty, whole-souled ploughman like George William Curtis, I hope that at all County Fairs or other intellectual hand-to-hand contests between outdoor orators and other domestic animals, I may be excused, and that when judges of inflamed slumber robes and restless tidies, which roll up and fall over the floor or adhere to the backs of innocent people; or stiff, hard Doric pillor-shams which do not in any way enhance ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... firelight towered the black bulk of the giant Swede in the centre of a wild hand-to-hand fight against five of McIvor's men. They were attacking him from all sides at once, and if any of them had been armed with rifles they had thrown these aside in favor of knives and clubs. The fighting was too close for the use of firearms. A sixth man had ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... the midshipmen that they had so stout and true a seaman as Dick Needham as their companion; for they encountered a desperate resistance from the pirates, and were instantly engaged in furious hand-to-hand combats. Meantime, so surrounded were they by their enemies, that they could not tell what had become of the rest of their shipmates. More than once they were nearly driven back through the port by which ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... superiority was, after all, in the men themselves. The English sailor was then, as now, a quite amphibious and all-cunning animal, capable of turning his hand to everything, from needlework and carpentry to gunnery or hand-to-hand blows; and he was, moreover, one of a nation, every citizen of which was not merely permitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practice from childhood the use of the bow, and accustomed to consider sword-play ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... The picturesque hand-to-hand fighting, the night attacks, the charges up precipitous hills, the retreats made carrying the wounded under constant fire, which he witnessed and in which he bore his part, he never again can see with the same fresh and enthusiastic eyes. Then it was absolutely new, and the ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... translated to Charlie, he saw at once the force of the argument. He could not have denied that the Jew had fallen in a hand-to-hand struggle with himself, and, were he to appear in Warsaw, he might be killed by the co-religionists of Ben Soloman; or, if he escaped this, might lie in a dungeon for months awaiting his trial, and perhaps be finally executed. There ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... watching, which so absorbed my attention that I could do little in the way of instruction, I succeeded in obtaining tolerable order. Usually, a painful silence was observed, every one knowing that there was a hand-to-hand fight going on for the mastery. The Junior class could not be divided because of other studies. Their recitations (?) continued to be a bedlam, a pandemonium. I afterward learned that some students, who already had some knowledge of the subject, remained on purpose to create ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... the vicomte on his shoulders and carried it back to the lines. The advantage was, however, pursued, the regiments took the reserve with them, and the enemy's palisades were utterly destroyed. At three o'clock the fire of the Arabs ceased; the hand-to-hand fight lasted two hours; it was a massacre. At five o'clock we were victorious at all points; the enemy had abandoned his positions, and M. le duc ordered the white flag to be planted on the summit of the little mountain. It was then ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
