"Scaling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spanker on the nob. They may have fancied him clever for selecting a position rather comfortable, as things went, until they had sight of him with his little French ally and two others, ammunition boys to rear, descending one bank and scaling another right into the flank of the enemy, when his old tower of a Masner was being heavily pressed by numbers. Then came a fight hand to hand, but the enemy stood in a clamp; not to split like a nut between crackers, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... their size. If small, they have been crowded or stunted and may as well be cut. Trees with large, healthy crowns composed of many comparatively small branches, and with rough dark bark showing no flat scaling, are sure to be growing rapidly, even if quite large. They are also less desired by the lumberman, who often calls them black pine or black jack, so may often be spared, without much sacrifice, for seed trees or in order to continue ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... garments of the dead away by the banks of the River of the Three Roads, which flows through the phantom-world. Pale blue her robe is; her hair and skin are white; her face is strangely wrinkled; her small, keen eyes are hard. The statue is very old, and the paint is scaling from it in places, so as to lend it ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... similar purposes. In a growing state the strong kinds are formed into stockades, which are impenetrable to any thing but regular infantry or artillery. By notching their sides the Malays make wonderfully light scaling ladders, which can be conveyed with facility, where heavier machines could not be transported. Bruised and crushed in water, the leaves and stems form Chinese paper, the finer qualities of which are only improved by a mixture of raw cotton and by more careful ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... proposed to free myself from this imprisonment; but I foresaw the inconveniences of wandering over this scene in absolute nakedness, and was willing therefore, at whatever hazard, to retain them. I continued to struggle with the current and to search for the means of scaling the steeps. My search was fruitless, and I began to meditate the ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the cavalry, to go and oppose the said detachment; and in whatever place he should meet the foe, there to stop and detain them, and even to engage in battle, should opportunity offer for it; at all events not to suffer those troops to approach Cominium. He then commanded the scaling ladders to be brought up to the walls, on every side of the city; and, under a fence of closed shields, advanced to the gates. Thus, at the same moment, the gates were broken open, and the assault made on every part of the walls. Though the Samnites, before they saw the assailants on the works, had ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... I expect to hear such a result when first the old woman began her tale. I now felt like one who had received his reprieve after condemnation. Instead of the mysteries, disguises, scaling of walls and windows, drawn scimitars, and bloody wounds attendant on a Turkish intrigue, I saw nothing before me but riches, ease, and repose from all future care. I blessed my star; in short, I held my fortune to be ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Taylor, or Browne, or De Quincey himself, have done, had one of them been wanted to write down the project of Wood's halfpence in Ireland? He would have resembled a king in his coronation robes compelled to lead a forlorn hope up the scaling ladders. The fact is, that Swift required for his style not only the plain good sense and other rare qualities enumerated, but pungent humour, quick insight, deep passion, and general power of mind, such as is given to few ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... adjoining house, and, scaling the roof, approached another building, which seemed to be, at least, one story loftier than its neighbours. Apparently, Jonathan was well acquainted with the premises; for, feeling about in the dark, he speedily discovered a ladder, up the steps of which he hurried. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... reckless daring and desperate condition. But Levy treated with such just ridicule any suggestion to abstract Violante by force from Lord Lansmere's house, so scouted the notions of nocturnal assault, with the devices of scaling windows and rope-ladders, that the count reluctantly abandoned that romance of villany so unsuited to our sober capital, and which would no doubt have terminated in his capture by the police, with the prospect of committal to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... beneath the town was skimmed across, and then, scaling a low stone wall, they plunged into the shadow of a big plantation and ran on between rows of limes and ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... never slackening his fire, had determined to take advantage of the darkness to send out a landing party to take two small batteries on the banks of the Patapsco, and then assault Fort McHenry from the rear. Twelve hundred and fifty men, with scaling-ladders and fascines, left the fleet in barges, and moved up the Patapsco towards Fort Covington and the City Battery. But their plan, though well laid, was defeated by the vigilance and courage of the garrisons of the two threatened positions,—sailors all, and many of them men from Barney's ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... ascent to the houses is by a piece of timber or stout bamboo, cut in notches, which latter an European cannot avail himself of, especially as the precaution is seldom taken of binding them fast. These are the wonderful light scaling-ladders which the old Portuguese writers described to have been used by the people of Achin in their wars with their nation. It is probable that the apprehension of danger from the wild beasts caused them to adopt and continue this rude expedient, in preference to more regular and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... would not ward off to-morrow's doom. So she took her place in the cushioned valley by Violet's side, and sat calm and still, while the ponies, warranted quiet to drive in single or double harness, stood up on end and made as if they had a fixed intention of scaling the rhododendron bank. ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... sign of life about the house—evidently planned with hospitable intentions, but now silent and forbidding. I tried the gates. They were locked securely. A screen of closely woven wire rose from the pavement half way up the iron work. Evidently it would be impossible to reach the doors without scaling this barrier, and I was not yet ready to try an expedient so desperate. Returning to my hotel I wrote a letter to the master of the house, telling him of my long-continued quest and of my hopes regarding our possible ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... among the leaves and found the thick vine. A moment later he was silently scaling the wall of the house, feeling his way carefully, testing every precarious foothold, dragging himself painfully upwards by means of the most uncanny, animal-like strength ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... as only a little while since he had sought to enter it unseen, he now sought to leave it, crouching from tree to tree and from shrubbery to shrubbery. His life was too valuable to be uselessly thrown away. He succeeded presently in scaling a wall and dropping into a side lane, to fall in later with a band of conspirators, some of whom were present when the tale of the Countess's treachery was told last night, and who were now quietly making their way to an ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... mountain wall on the west. So still was he and so intent in his study of the landscape, that a horned-toad, which had dodged under the edge of the rock at his approach, crept forth again, venturing quite to the edge of his boot heel; and a lizard, scaling the rock at his back, almost touched ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... itself, went exulting homeward, carrying away women for concubines, men to be sacrificed, and such miscellaneous booty as could be conveyed without wagons or beasts to draw them.[109] If the sudden assault, with scaling ladders, happened to fail, the assailants were likely to be baffled, for there was no artillery, and so little food could be carried that a siege meant ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... the roof, apparently, for some twenty minutes. Then he came down again, chatted for a while with the janitor in the basement, and giving him a cigar, borrowed an eight-foot step-ladder, for the purpose of scaling some twelve feet of brick wall, where the adjoining office building towered its additional story above ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... Balder, the Apollo, of Asgard. The other gods were of inferior rank to these, and answered to the lesser divinities of Greece and Rome. Niord was the Neptune, and Frega, daughter of Niord, was the Venus of the North. Heimdall, the watchman of Asgard, whose duty it was to prevent the rebellious giants scaling by surprise the walls of the celestial city, dwelt under the end of the rainbow; his vision was so perfect he could discern objects 100 leagues distant, either by night or day, and his ear was so fine he could hear the wool growing on the sheep, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... the migratory instinct quite as distinctly as those animals which I have just told you about. The salmon leaves the sea, and seeks its way up the rivers, stemming their most rapid currents, and scaling highest waterfalls with a pertinacity which can only be the result of an instinct implanted in ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... the grenadiers soon appeared, and the dark column, half-climbing, half-running, were seen scaling the height. A rifle-bullet sent the French leader tumbling from the precipice; and a cheer—mad and reckless as the war-cry of an Indian—rent the sky, as the 71st and 79th Highlanders sprang upon ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... they came to a hill the road was so slippery that it was almost impossible to negotiate the elevation with even the lightest load. Detaching horses from the pieces in order to double and treble the teams they succeeded in scaling the height with cannons of small calibre, but they were forced to abandon the ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... in any other spot that has given me such a real idea of the mountains as this. One must have steps to climb by, even in imagination. How impertinent we are, rushing at the tremendousness of Washington in the way we do; scaling it in little pleasure-wagons, and never taking in the thought of it ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and swords, some of their chiefs having coats of mail. They were so scarce of powder, that after blowing their mine, they had hardly enough to supply the small arms for entering the breach, though furnished with twenty or twenty-five barrels from our ships. They had not a single scaling-ladder to assist their entry. Were we to forsake them, they would soon be completely at a stand, yet they have already broken conditions with us in several things, and I much fear, when all is done, we shall be paid with reversions, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... dispatch. Campaigning among dykes and hedges—fighting with a river on one flank and a fortress on the t'other—parade manoeuvres—where, at the first check, the enemy retreats, and leaves you free, for the whole afternoon, to write off your successes to the Directory. Had you seen our fellows scaling the Alps, with avalanches of snow descending at every fire of the great guns—forcing pass after pass against an enemy, posted on every cliff and crag above us—cutting our way to victory by roads the hardiest hunter had seldom trod; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... marvelous when considered as to location and construction. The time that must necessarily have been consumed in doing the work and the amount of danger and labor involved—labor in preparing and getting the material into place and danger in scaling the dizzy heights over an almost impassible trail, it seems the boldest assumption to assert that the work was done by ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... eyes riveted upon the open door. Suddenly she leaned forward, for the ominous clanging of irons came to her ears. She thought of the night she had been found scaling the ivy to Daddy's cell—how long she had waited in the darkness for only a little word about him. They had given her none, and her vivid imagination brought back the anguish of that lonely walk through the storm ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... mighty wall-scaling struggle to get over the fence and secure the coveted ball. As fast as one team would try to boost each other over, their opponents would pull them down. This contest continued for fully five minutes while the crowd roared with delight. In the meantime George Butler, the Referee, took advantage ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... stopped falling by the time he had done his chores and breakfasted. The only benefit the storm had brought him was that it did away with the necessity of carrying water for his washing. He had acquired the agility of a cliff-dweller from scaling the embankment by means of the "toe-holts"; yet, at that, it was no easy matter to transport a bucket of water ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... between the two armies. At length the Romans arrive before a walled city (probably Sarmizegethusa) where all the incidents of a siege, including personal adventures, are portrayed. A Roman soldier, standing at the top of a scaling ladder, has struck off the head of one of the Dacians on the wall, whilst the latter are seen hurling stones and other missiles at those engaged in the assault. Then comes another application for peace, a Dacian prince ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... peacefully to meet him, suddenly crumpled him in his arms and threw him down on top of the captain. The driver was a young giant, and when he climbed on his load and poised a lump of coal in both hands, a policeman, who was just scaling the waggon from the side, let go and dropped back to earth. The captain ordered half-a-dozen of his men to take the waggon. The teamster, scrambling over the load from side to side, beat them down with ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... Not a soldier dared to risk trying to follow him by the road he had taken, over the ramparts and moats; for, without that passion for liberty which lent wings to the prisoner there was no hope of any of them scaling the walls without killing himself a dozen ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... array make for the walls of the city. And some carried firebrands, and some scaling-ladders, and some slew the warders at the gates, and cast javelins at them who stood on the walls. And then there arose a great strife in the city, for some would have opened the gates that the men of Troy might enter, and others made haste to defend the walls. ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... to grief at the hands of the gods, are not weak passive creatures, but heaven-scaling Titans. This points to the antipodal difference between the characters of these two poets, and explains in part why Goethe did not succumb to the sickly sentimentalism of which he rid himself in "Werther." The ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... and as a pledge of perfect reconciliation, both he and his wife slept all night in Mr Banks's tent: Their presence, however, was no palladium for, between eleven and twelve o'clock, one of the natives attempted to get into the fort by scaling the walls, with a design, no doubt, to steal whatever he should happen to find; he was discovered by the centinel, who happily did not fire, and he ran away much faster than any of our people could follow him. The iron, and iron-tools, which were in continual ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... near Pillnitz, the summer dwelling of the King of Saxony. Having crossed the broad stream, we leapt joyously up the steep path that led into a mimic Switzerland; a country of peaks, valleys, and pine trees, wanting only snow and glaciers. For three days we wandered among those wild regions; now scaling the bleak face of a rock; now stretched luxuriously on the purple moss, or gathering wild raspberries by the road side. From the abrupt edge of the overhanging Bastei we looked down some six hundred feet upon the wandering Elbe, threading its way by broad slopes, rich with the growth ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... and got them as fast as possible on board the transports. Some of the people of the town contrived to make known to Csar's army what was going on, by means of signals from the walls; the army immediately brought scaling ladders in great numbers, and, mounting the walls with great ardor and impetuosity, they drove all before them, and soon broke open the gates and got possession of the city. But the barricades and pitfalls, together with ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Fascines and scaling ladders were prepared. The Green Brigade were to head the assault, and Gustavus, addressing them, bade them remember ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... brought no respite to the Federals. Archer and Pender had turned their right; Ewell was pressing forward against their left, scaling the ridge on which their batteries had been posted; Early and Lane were pressing back their centre, and their guns had already limbered up. Jackson, galloping to the front, was received with the cheers of his victorious troops. In every quarter of the field the enemy was in ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Cambrai, Flower o' the Lily (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), should not be regarded as in any way bearing upon the more modern history of that remarkable city. It has nothing to do with our war; it has a war of its own, a rapid affair of bows and arrows, scaling ladders and such desperate situations as can be, and were, saved by the arrival of the right man, single-handed, in the right place at the right moment. Familiar as is his type in novels of this adventurous kind, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... "Several lengths of scaling-ladder, each 6 1/2 feet long, all of which may be readily connected, forming in a short space of time a ladder of any required height; a canvas sheet, with 10 or 12 handles of rope round the edge of it for the purpose of a fire-escape; one 10-fathom and one 14-fathom piece of 2 1/2-inch rope; ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... windows, stood a smaller table. The covering of this was turkey-red cloth with white pattern; it boasted a white-metal "caster"; and possessed real chairs. Here Bob took his seat, in company with Fox, Collins, Mason, Tally and the half-dozen active young fellows he had seen handling the scaling rules near the ships. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... rather than see her in sorrow. Well, I could bide a time. I would go to London in company with Paddy and Jem Bottles, since they owned all the money, and if three such rogues could not devise something, then I would go away and bury myself in a war in foreign parts, occupying myself in scaling fortresses and capturing guns. These things I know I could have performed magnificently, but from the Earl I had learned that I was an ill man to conduct an affair of ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... afar rang on the shrill brass; a shout follows, and is echoed from the sky. The Volscians hasten up in even line under their advancing roof of shields, and set to fill up the trenches and tear down the palisades. Some seek entrance by scaling the walls with ladders, where the defenders' battle-line is thin, and light shows through gaps in the ring of men. The Teucrians in return shower weapons of every sort, and push them down with stiff poles, practised by ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... Broad Street, was instituted for gratuitous assistance to the poor in all cases of diseases of the teeth, including extracting, stopping, scaling, as well as the regulation of children's teeth. Any poor sufferer can have immediate attention without a recommendatory note, but applicants requiring special operations must be provided with a note of introduction from a governor. About 6,000 ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... attempt at a siege. When the leaders of the Congregation, among whom on this occasion the contingent from the towns, and especially from Dundee, seems foremost, began to prepare for their expedition, they chose St. Giles's Church as the most convenient for the preparation of the scaling ladders, a practical evidence that sacredness had departed from the church as a building, not at all to the mind of the preachers, who probably saw no logical succession between the hammers of the destroyers pulling down ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... we heard firing at the gates of the city, and knew that our deliverers were near. The next day, scaling the walls or battering down the gates, they forced their way into the city and effected our rescue. The day following, the Roman Catholic Cathedral was relieved,—the defence of which forms the brightest page in the history of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... from the Iris was made under even more trying circumstances. She rolled heavily in the sea, which rendered the use of the scaling ladders very difficult. But at this time, according to calculations, enough men had been landed to ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... the move for a fortnight. For fourteen terrible days in all kinds of weather, he had worked like a native in the forest; with sham fights and blank cartridge attacks upon imaginary positions, with scaling of stockades and building of bridges—all work at which his soul revolted—to be told at the end he ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... in my mind, I was speeding with the train toward Buffalo, when, near that city, the sight of a workman doing something on the dizzy edge of a sky-scaling iron construction brought me to my senses very suddenly. And now I perceived, by a flash of insight, that I had been steeping myself in pure ancestral blindness, and looking at life with the eyes of a remote spectator. Wishing for heroism and the spectacle of human ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... them ready, not one was made.[39] Eventually an insufficient number were got together, but "the 44th, which was appointed to carry them, had either misunderstood or neglected their orders, and now headed the column of attack, without any means being provided for crossing the enemy's ditch, or scaling ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... with a pinkish-yellowish tint, 2 inches broad, campanulate, sticky, broken up into squamules, pellicle scaling, margin thin. Stem slender, 5 inches long, shiny, mealy at apex, slightly bulbous. Gills gray color, adnexed, distant, ventricose. This is a pretty mushroom. The shade of color of the pileus is delicate. We found it in ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... shelter and protection to a great number of persons, who could ride upon it while it was drawn or pushed up near the walls, and thus reach a point where they could begin to undermine the walls, or plant their ladders for scaling them. The Duke of Lancaster caused one sow to be made which would carry, in ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... narrow frieze which bordered the upper part of the frieze are marked from 50 to 68. The first four fragments represent the attack of a town, supposed to be the Lycian town Xanthus. Here the besiegers may be observed scaling the wall, and the officers cheering on the men. The five following fragments represent various scenes of warfare between Greeks and Asiatics. Then a walled city is represented, with the heads of a besieged party looking over the ramparts; then a figure of a Satrap occurs (62), supposed ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... they would, in fact, seek their night's lodging just where the King had indicated. Impossible as the feat appeared, they instantly rushed to the attack of the formidable fortress with such irresistible dash that they succeeded in scaling the walls and entering it, pikes in rest. The King, who had run forward as soon as he heard of the attack, watched with delight his loyal Madrilenos climbing up the face of the masonry with extraordinary skill, and not ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... Muskets, rifles, and sabers had been accumulated. A portable barricade had been constructed in the event of possible street fighting—a sort of wheeled framework that could be transformed into litters or scaling-ladders at will. Mess offices and kitchens were there that could feed a small army. Flags and painted signs carrying the open eye that had been adopted as emblematic of vigilance decorated the main room. A huge alarm bell had been mounted upon the roof. Mattresses, ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... canoes containing Indians, men, women and children. They were poling their craft around in all directions spearing fish. They caught many large mullet and then went on shore and made camp, and the red ladies began scaling the fish. As soon as their lords and masters had unloaded the canoes, a party started out with four of the boats, two men in a boat, to try their luck again. They ranged all abreast, and moved slowly down the stream ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... thy sacred artists know— Could they distantly conjecture How we use their architecture, Ousting the indignant Joss For a pampered Flirt or Floss, Poodle, Blenheim, Skye, Maltese, Lapped in purple and proud ease— They might read their god's reproof Here on blister'd wall and roof; Scaling lacquer, dinted bells, Floor befoul'd of weed and shells, Where, as erst the tabid Curse Brooded over Pelops' hearse, Squats the sea-cow, keeping house, Sibylline, gelatinous. Where is Carlo? Tell, O tell, Echo, from this fluted shell, In whose concave ear the tides ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be a hard nut to crack," Cuthbert said, laughing. "With such arms as you have in the forest the enterprise would be something akin to scaling ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... establish it as a law for ever, that no one should consider a Roman citizen and soldier, whatever his situation, a fit object for injurious treatment." Animated by this exhortation of their general, they distributed the scaling-ladders to men selected from each of the companies; and the army being divided into two parts, so that Laelius, as lieutenant-general, might command one, they attacked the city in two places at once; thus creating ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... and to the left, if there were any possibility of scaling the wooded slopes and so rejoining the sturdy swordsmith without coming to blows again with his father's household; but one glance told him that such hopes were vain indeed. On either hand the crags rose inaccessible ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... after scaling another mountain, we reached a wide, elevated plain, in the middle of which stood the old dorf of Beerfelden. It was then crowded with people, on account of a great cattle-fair being held there. All the farmers of the neighborhood were assembled, clad in the ancient country costume—broad ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... outlined against the ceiling of the waters like thin, black, paper cutouts. Picture a forest clinging to the sides of a peak in the Harz Mountains, but a submerged forest. The trails were cluttered with algae and fucus plants, hosts of crustaceans swarming among them. I plunged on, scaling rocks, straddling fallen tree trunks, snapping marine creepers that swayed from one tree to another, startling the fish that flitted from branch to branch. Carried away, I didn't feel exhausted any more. I followed a guide who was immune ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... passed, and he patted his head, the one single creature in his uncle's household who might regret his absence on the morrow. Now the way was clear; he stole off into the darkness, finding no difficulty in scaling the wall, and ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... short, for just as they shouted Varney arose, and after a moment or two's stagger he set off at full speed, which produced another shout from the mob; and just at that moment, a body of his pursuers were seen scaling the walls after him. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... center. The fellow must have been sleeping beside the road, for, as I came abreast of him, he raised upon one elbow and after a single glance at the approaching caravan leaped shrieking to his feet and fled madly down the road, scaling a nearby wall with the agility of a scared cat. The Tharks paid him not the slightest attention; they were not out upon the warpath, and the only sign that I had that they had seen him was a quickening of the pace of the caravan as we hastened toward the ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... effective. The battery 'blazed with cannon, swivels, and small-arms,' which fired point-blank at the men ashore and with true aim at the boats crowded together round the narrow landing-place. Undaunted though undisciplined, the men ashore rushed at the walls with their scaling-ladders and began the assault. The attempt was vain. The first men up the rungs were shot, stabbed, or cut down. The ladders were smashed or thrown aside. Not one attacker really got home. Meanwhile the leading boats in ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... the infidel, chief among them the giant King Rodomont. Smiting those of his troops who hesitated to mount the scaling ladders, he waded through the wet moat, scaled the first wall, leaped the dry ditch, mounted the second wall, and ran alone through the city, spreading terror, death, and fire, while Charlemagne, ignorant of his presence, was busied in the defence ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... upon it had not been, in the strange scheme of things, so promptly removed. Would she have led him altogether, attached as he was to her, into the wilderness of mere mistakes? Would she have prevented him from ever scaling his vertiginous Peak?—or would she, otherwise, have been able to accompany him to that eminence, where he might have pointed out to her, as Cortez to HIS companions, the revelation vouchsafed? No companion of Cortez had presumably been a real lady: Mr. Verver allowed that historic fact to determine ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... dight whilst the Creator veiled them with the veil of night. Then he took his drawn sword in his right and his grappling hook in his left and, repairing to the Caliph's sitting-saloon planted his scaling ladder and cast his grapnel on to the side of the terrace-roof; then, raising the trap-door, let himself down into the saloon, where he found the eunuchs asleep. He drugged them with hemp-fumes;[FN93] and, taking the Caliph's dress; dagger, rosary, kerchief, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... need not here be more than mentioned; the manner of its capture, however, cannot be too often referred to as an instance of what resolution and conduct can effect in Asiatic warfare. Having prepared scaling ladders in such secrecy that even his European officers were ignorant of what was being done or planned, Popham sent a storming party of sepoys, backed by twenty Europeans, to a place at the foot of the rock pointed out to him by some thieves. It was the night of the 3rd August, ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... a mental picture of the Capronian seacoast from Bowen's manuscript, and it is not likely that any two of these pictures resemble each other, or that any of them resemble the coast as we shall presently find it. I have in view three plans for scaling the cliffs, and the means for carrying out each is in the hold. There is an electric drill with plenty of waterproof cable to reach from the ship's dynamos to the cliff-top when the Toreador is anchored at a safe distance ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... haunches in the most scientific manner, while my only mode of preserving my balance was to hold fast by the bridle and lay myself braced almost flat against his back. Then our position would suddenly change, and we would be scaling the opposite bank, at the imminent risk of falling backward into the ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... boats should have a distinguishing flag; and scaling-ladders, intrenching tools, and other implements, should be carried ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... Chorasmian shore He paused, a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, 275 Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course High over the immeasurable main. His eyes pursued its flight:—'Thou hast a home, 280 Beautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine home, Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... initiative in action appeared in the tendency of certain mice to climb out of the experiment boxes or labyrinths. It would have been extremely easy for any of the mice to escape from the labyrinths by scaling the walls of the alleys, for they were only 10 cm. in height, and when a dancer stood on its hind legs it could easily reach the top with its nose. But, strange though it will seem to any one who has not worked with the dancer, not more than one in ten of the animals ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... Messire Charles of Valois. In fact, at that very time, the Company of the Marechal de Rais was making assault on the Walls near by the Porte Saint-Honore. The Armagnacs had brought up in carts great bundles of faggots and wattled hurdles to fill up the moats, and above six hundred scaling-ladders for storming the ramparts. The Maid Jeanne, who was nowise as the Burgundians believed, but lived a pious life and guarded her chastity, set foot to ground, and was the first down into a dry moat, which ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... from my arboreal watch-tower to the ground and moved rapidly away to the right with the intention of circling the hill if necessary until I had found an un-watched spot where I might have some slight chance of scaling the heights ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Epigrams, Songs and Sonets, 1567, contains a single fourteen-lined poem. The French word 'quatorzain' was the term almost as frequently applied as 'sonnet' to the fourteen-line stanza in regular sonnet form, which alone falls within my survey. Watson is congratulated on 'scaling the skies in lofty quatorzains' in verses before his Passionate Centurie, 1582; cf. 'crazed quatorzains' in Thomas Nash's preface to his edition of Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, 1591; and Amours in Quatorzains on the title-page of the first edition ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... toils.[19] But I am come hither, persuaded by thy words, to an unknown and inhospitable land. I ask you, then, Pylades, for you are a sharer with me in this toil, what shall we do? For thou beholdest the lofty battlements of the walls. Shall we proceed to the scaling of the walls? How then should we escape notice[20] [if we did so?] Or shall we open the brass-wrought fastenings of the bolts? of which things we know nothing.[21] But if we are caught opening the gates and contriving an entrance, we shall ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... a touch of stage realism to the scene. Nothing could save the interior of the tower—that was past praying for; but a shout went up that there was a man inside, and the firemen threw their ladders against the walls and prepared their scaling-irons and life-saving apparatus. The smoke rolled out in dense volumes now, and through the gloom a voice shouted, 'It 's all right! He 's crossed ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... certain friends within the town. Either a subterranean passage was to be opened to the Greeks, or they were to be assured of friends upon the walls. Alexius, at dead of night, brought his army close to the city. At midnight, against a certain stipulated spot the scaling-ladders were placed, where there were none but traitors to receive the men; at the same time, the passage was traversed, and Alexius found himself within the walls of the city.[52] They broke open the Gate of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... flashed far and wide there started out of the gloom not only the long lines of yellow jerkined pikemen and arquebuseers, with their storm-hoods and scaling ladders, rushing swiftly towards the forts, but beyond the broken sea dyke the reserved masses supporting the attack, drawn up in solid clumps of spears, with their gay standards waving above them, and with a strong force of cavalry in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... lately hung over the hearth at Nid de Merle were now aimed again and again at the heads and corslets of Guisards, with something of the same exulting excitement as, only higher, more engrossing, and fiercer than, that with which the lads had taken aim at a wolf, or ridden after a fox. Scaling-ladders were planted and hurled down again; stones were cast from the battlements, crushing the enemy; and throughout Berenger's quick eye, alert movements, and great height and strength, made him a most valuable champion, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or the original drawing, is placed against a glass plate, coated with a mixture of bitumen and of marine-glue dissolved in benzine. The marine-glue gives the bitumen greater pliancy, and prevents it from scaling off when rubbed, particularly when the plate is retouched with a dry point. These bitumen plates are so thoroughly opaque to the penetration of the actinic rays, that the printing-frame may be left for any time in full sunlight without any fear of fog being produced on the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... around Hilton has had somewhat the same effect upon the people that it confines. If a social barrier of any sort appears upon the horizon of my sister-in-law Edith, she is never happy until she has climbed over it. She was in the very midst of scaling that high and difficult barrier built up about Hilton by the Summer Colonists, ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... through that mighty range, the Andes of North America, which in California is known as the Sierras, but which in Oregon changes its name to the Cascades. Nature has thus provided a pathway for the Northern Pacific Road through these mountains, the scaling of which, on the other line, at an elevation of over seven thousand feet (a most wonderful triumph of engineering), cost the Central Pacific millions of dollars, and compelled them for seventy miles to maintain a grade of over one hundred feet to the mile—twice the maximum of the Northern Pacific ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... own nature, and this more has been seen in the distance as something of infinite value.[11] A mountain, as it were, has to be climbed; dark ravines have to be gone through; and rivers have to be swum across. The whole vision means no less than an entrance into a new kind of world, the scaling to a new kind of existence, and a conquest which will make the pilgrim a participator in that which is Divine. A struggle has to take place, because so much that belongs to the life, on the level where it now stands, belongs to a world below ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... a larger dose than enough to produce a deep sleep. You will take care to prepare me a good ladder for to-night; after which you will go and wait for me in my boat, where you will find Numa and Bonaroux. They have my orders. I shall not want you in scaling the fortress; I ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... is emblemised by the giants scaling the heavens: one very fine figure, full of action, in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... enemy succeeded in scaling the heights to the left of the Boers at Slabberts Nek by an unguarded footpath during the night. As soon as the crimson light of a July dawn had exposed the frost-covered ridges, the dark overcoats on the left of the Boer positions revealed the unwelcome fact that ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... supplied with provisions as to defy a blockade. The summons to surrender was treated with derision by the commander, who inquired whether the Macedonians had wings? But a small body of Macedonians having succeeded in scaling some heights which overhung the fortress, the garrison became so alarmed that they immediately surrendered. To this place a Bactrian named Oxyartes, an adherent of Bessus, had sent his daughters for safety. One of them, named Roxana, was of surpassing beauty, and ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... all her jewels, of which she had the richest of any lady in all those parts; for in that the old Count was over-lavish: and the next night I brought her a suit, which I had made that day on purpose, as gay as could be made in so short a time; and scaling my wall, well armed, I found her ready at the door to receive me; and going into an arbour, by the aid of a dark-lanthorn I carried, she dressed her in a laced shirt of mine, and this suit I had brought her, of blue velvet, trimmed with rich loops and ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... a pale young girl, "and let me breathe. I look at you, you only, while scaling these walls of the gulf; otherwise, what would become of me? I am such a feeble creature. Do ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... are wild thoughts,—& we are wrong to fear That any ill can touch the child of heaven; She is not lost,—trust me, she has but strayed Up some steep mountain path, or in yon dell, Or to the rock where yellow wall-flowers grow, Scaling with venturous step the narrow path Which the goats fear to tread;—she will return ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... thither, the sun had for a whole century reigned over it in lonely majesty. The garden, then, had known no other master; it had beheld him, every morning, scaling the boundary wall with his slanting rays, at noontide it had seen him pour his vertical heat upon the panting soil; and at evening it had seen him go off, on the other side, with a kiss of farewell upon its foliage. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... Ritter has described an eruption which he observed in the foundling asylum at Prague, where nearly 300 cases occurred in ten years. According to Crocker it begins in the second or third week of life, and occasionally as late as the fifth week, with diffuse and universal scaling, which may be branny or in laminae like pityriasis rubra, and either dry or with suffusion beneath the epidermis. Sometimes it presents flaccid bullae like pemphigus foliaceus, and then there are crusts as well as scales, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the rock carefully, and found many pieces that gave warning of scaling off. Several large flakes, each weighing some hundredweight, lay beneath the table rock,-upon the under surface of which could be distinctly traced the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... English, left these Diemel regions towards Wesel, at his speediest. September 29th, Erbprinz and vanguard, Corps rapidly following, are got to Dorsten, within 20 miles of Wesel. A most swift Erbprinz; likely for such work. And it is thought by judges, Had he had either siege-artillery or scaling apparatus, he might really have attacked Wesel with good chance upon it. But he has not even a ladder ready, much less a siege-gun. Siege-guns are at Bielefeld [come from Bremen, I suppose, by English boating, up the Weser so far]; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... scaling that invisible way, with the twinkling feet of the carriers drawing upward like a thread of thin gold which they were to climb. What, St. George thought as the way seemed to lengthen before them, what if there were no end? What if this were some ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... coarsely and brightly painted and gilt; and, horrible to reflect, it flashed upon me that they must have once been both glaring and vulgar. Yet to-day the dim richness of the effect, the dints, the scaling-off of the flakes, the fading of the pigment, the dulling of the gold, were incomparable; and I began to wonder if perhaps that was not what happened to us in life; and that though we foolishly ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... overtop the battlements, were brought up to the walls; which were also attacked with rams, and undermined by sappers working in the shelter of huge penthouses. But breaches were no sooner made than repaired; every scaling-party was repulsed; and the defenders derided the Emperor in opprobrious songs. For once in his life he descended to bluster and ferocious inhumanity. He swore that he would give no quarter, he executed captives ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... without ball or powder; sledge-hammers, knives, axes, saws, and weapons pillaged from the butchers' shops; a forest of iron bars and wooden clubs; long ladders for scaling the walls, each carried on the shoulders of a dozen men; lighted torches; tow smeared with pitch, and tar, and brimstone; staves roughly plucked from fence and paling; and even crutches taken from crippled beggars in the streets, composed their arms. When all ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... during a long walk around the valley, during which he once more noted the absolute seclusion of the place and the impossibility of escape by scaling the cliffs. The doctor was fishing again by the brook, but paid no heed when Uncle John tramped by. The sight of the dapper little man gave Mr. Merrick a thought, and presently he turned back and sat down beside ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... is much the same effect when steaming through the Kyles of Bute, for there the ship seems to be going full speed for the shore of an entirely enclosed sea, and here, saving for the tell-tale railway, there seems no way out of the abyss without scaling the perpendicular walls. The rocks are at their finest at Killingnoble Scar, where they take the form of a semicircle on the west side of the railway. The scar was for a very long period famous for the breed of hawks, which were specially watched by the Goathland ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... watchers to be an easy, safe, and rapid means of scaling the steep passage. The men climbed up without assistance. Mrs. Beck, as usual, had hysteria; she half walked and was half dragged up. Stewart supported Dorothy with one arm, while with the other he held to the lasso. Ambrose had ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... subsisted only on the charity of the pilgrims. Some feeble and hasty efforts were made for the defence of Jerusalem: but in the space of fourteen days, a victorious army drove back the sallies of the besieged, planted their engines, opened the wall to the breadth of fifteen cubits, applied their scaling-ladders, and erected on the breach twelve banners of the prophet and the sultan. It was in vain that a barefoot procession of the queen, the women, and the monks, implored the Son of God to save his tomb and his inheritance from impious violation. Their sole hope was in the mercy of the conqueror, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... featherheaded young ensigns do other than, by white Bourbon Cockades, handed them from fair fingers; by waving of swords, drawn to pledge the Queen's health; by trampling of National Cockades; by scaling the Boxes, whence intrusive murmurs may come; by vociferation, tripudiation, sound, fury and distraction, within doors and without,—testify what tempest-tost state of vacuity they are in? Till champagne and tripudiation do their work; and all lie ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... a year of wand'ring to and fro, Like restless spirits; scaling mountain heights; Dwelling among the countless, rare delights Of lands historic; turning dusty pages, Stamped with the tragedies of mighty ages Gazing upon the scenes of bloody acts, Of kings long buried—bare, unvarnished facts, Surpassing wildest fictions of the brain; Rubbing against all people, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... tracing, which seemed absolutely to bar further progress. It was only about forty-five or fifty feet high, and somewhat roughened by fissures and projections; but these seemed so slight and insecure, as footholds, that I tried hard to avoid the precipice altogether, by scaling the wall of the channel on either side. But, though less steep, the walls were smoother than the obstructing rock, and repeated efforts only showed that I must either go right ahead or turn back. The tried dangers beneath seemed even ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... the others, the men of my mettle, the men who would 'stablish my fame Unto its ultimate issue, winning me honor, not shame; Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go, Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow; Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks, Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks. I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods; Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods. Long have I waited ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... over two or three houses in the castle, the shells fell on the rocks in the inside the castle, and their weight and force of falling would break them without so much as their blowing up.... As to storming the walls, they were so high that our scaling ladders would not near ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph |
