"Battering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... under promise of free rations and amusements. If the Empire were threatened they would not, in their own interests, urge England to spend men and money on it. Consequently it might be well if the nations within the Empire were strong enough to endure a little battering unaided at the first outset—till such time, that is, as England were permitted to move ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... with their cracked and grass-grown stone urns, and furnished with the light foliage of untended creeping plants. Down the short broad walk leading to this sombre entrance, my eye constantly wandered; but no impatient rattle on the latch, no battering at the gate, indicated the presence of a visited, and the lazy bell hung dumbly among ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... pin, Paul had arranged in his mind just how such fastenings could be broken without trouble. He had noted quite a good-sized log lying near by, used by the vagrants in their seclusion to chop their firewood on. And Paul had decided that this log would make an admirable battering ram. The door was old and feeble, so that one good slam would doubtless hurl it back, and give them ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... ever undertook and, as I'm not a battering ram, I decline to be knocked round any longer," growled Steve, dusting his knees and ruefully surveying the feet that had been trampled on till they tingled, for his boots and broadcloth were dear to the heart of ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... spared the anxiety of knowing that the victorious German hosts were drawing nearer and nearer the fortress of Grovno. Like stone houses built by children the other ancient Russian forts had fallen before his "Excellenz von Beseler," the victor of Antwerp, who was known as the German battering ram. ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... steering, it would be a miracle if we escaped destruction. Just then a signal of distress was run up, but the flag was instantly blown away, and the next minute she gave a plunge forward, and before she rose her remaining mast went over the bows, where the spars hung seemingly engaged in battering them in. Scarcely had this occurred than she broached to, and lay like a helpless log in the trough of the seas. Still she was fearfully near, and I was far from satisfied that she would not drive down upon us, and if so, inevitably with ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... battering-rams, even against infantry, men and horses ought to be watered and fresh (Ponsomby's cavalry at Waterloo). If there is ever contact between cavalry, the shock is so weakened by the hands of the men, the rearing of the horses, the swinging ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... the attacks became less frequent. The schooners manoeuvring in the river poured broadsides into the Indian villages, battering down the flimsy wigwams. Pontiac moved his camp from the mouth of Parent's Creek to a position nearer Lake St Clair, out of range of their guns, and turned his thoughts to contrive some means of destroying the troublesome ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... dull battering,—as if some gigantic creature was performing a Terpsichorean feat upon the sand-bank above them; but sharper sounds were heard at intervals,—screams commingled with short snortings, both proclaiming something of the nature of ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... and for four days successively poured in a fire from the isthmus alone of six thousand five hundred cannon-balls and one thousand one hundred bombs every twenty-four hours. So approached the great closing scene of September 13. At seven A.M. of that day the ten battering-ships unmoored from the head of the bay and stood down to their station. Between nine and ten they anchored, and the general fire at once began. The besieged replied with equal fury. The battering-ships seem in the main, and for some hours, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Larger towns, especially those belonging to warrior chiefs, have high mud-walls, sometimes with loopholes and bastions, and are capable of standing a siege where the enemy has neither cannon nor battering-rams. The gate was made of planks shaped with the axe, for the natives have no saws. The appearance of the place from a distance was very singular, for it consisted of 400 or 500 huts, all built in the same manner, with conical roofs ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... British soldier appeared on parade—no one attempted either to gain the fort or repair to the commandant. The troops of the garrison simply hugged their respective quarters, and barricaded the doors. The assailants were unprovided with the necessary implements for battering or bombarding. The fort was in possession of the British, and daylight was approaching. And thus this bold and brilliant attempt was baffled—it is difficult, at this time of day, to say how. Lee was dissatisfied with the result. Marion, more modestly, in a letter to Greene, says: "Col. ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... is evident, there ought to be siege-cannon got straightway; and, still more immediate, the right posts and battering-places should be ready against its coming.—"Let the Young Dessauer with that Rearguard, or Reserve of 10,000, which is now at Crossen, come up and assist here," orders Friedrich; "and let him be swift, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... transport, the shallow bed of the Miami aiding them but little, it was a matter of no mean difficulty with the Americans to convey through several hundred miles of forest, the heavy guns they required for battering, and as it was only at intervals this could be effected; the most patient endurance and unrelaxing perseverance being necessary to the end. From the inactivity of this force, or rather the confinement of its operations to objects of defence, the ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... grows the water, stronger and stronger presses the current. Already the little post-cart following in our wake is almost submerged, and the water is battering against the bottom of the arba, and splashing over our feet as we sit. More than once the horses stop short, and plant their feet firmly, to save themselves from being swept bodily away, and the roar of the chafing pebbles comes ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... voice like the whisperings of the battle zone in France. Take a good look at him while he is quiet for ten seconds hand running. Everything about him is tremendous—except his size. He is built to withstand banter, ridicule and jollying; his sturdy nature is guaranteed proof against the battering assaults of unholy mirth from other scouts; his round face and curly hair are the delight of the girls of Bridgeboro; his loyalty is as the mighty rock of Gibraltar. A bully little scout he is—a sort of ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... we were in was a 500-ton cruising submarine. It had just come from eight months' guarding the Channel, and showed all the battering of eight months of a very rough and stormy career with no time for a lie-up for repairs. It was interesting to see the commander hand the depth gauge a wallop to start it working and find out if the centre of the boat was really nine feet higher than either end. ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... was one of increasing difficulty for the Tories. Peel's followers began to suspect more and more strongly that he was not sound on the question of the corn taxes; outside Parliament, Cobden and Bright were battering Protection at their great monthly meetings in Covent Garden Theatre. The troubles in Ireland were growing acute, and the arrest of O'Connell and the Repeal leaders made matters worse. The Government had been forced ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... be no electric power on which the mill depended. The mill had been stripped of all smaller stuff, and its dynamos had been chipped with an ax until the copper windings showed frayed and useless. The shoes of the huge stamps were worn down to a thin, uneven rim, battering on broken surfaces. The Venners rattled on their foundations, and the plates had been scarred as if by a chisel in the hands of ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... the place. They said it didn't use to be so! Such fritter frying; such johnny-cake baking; such chowder making, and flounder frying! Nearly a dozen fine buxom-looking, corn-fed females (helps),—such as Vermont only can grow, were stuffing and stewing, and beating and battering, and themselves seeming on the eve of dissolution. They evinced alarm at my presence, but I told them not to be scared, inasmuch as I was an intimate acquaintance of the General, for whom I carried Cape Cod. On the ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... by the neck, wrenched his face around, and demanded: "Can that stuff, Kid. If you don't like the new stunt you can beat it. This here lady has got more nerve than ten transcontinental bums put together—woman, lady like her, out battering for eats and pounding the roads! She's the new boss, see? But old Uncle Crook is here with his mits, ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... world. Thin streamers of fog twined up from the earth as if they grew from seeds planted by the storm. But there was no wind, no sound from the peaks. Only under his stiff body Shann could still feel that vibration which was the sea battering against the cliff wall. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... things of Japan you should visit a temple in Osaka, the chief manufacturing town of Japan. There hangs a bell which is 25 feet high and weighs 220 tons. In a frame beside the bell is suspended a beam, a regular battering-ram, which is set in motion up and down when the bell is sounded. And when the bell emits its heavy, deafening ring it sounds ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... The sounds of battering had ceased, and as he passed the oak door he laid his ear to it: some one was in the place! the lid of the bureau shut with a loud bang, and he heard a lock turned. The wall could not be half down yet: the earl must have entered the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... jam had grown enormously. For a hundred rods up the rapid the channel was full of lumber, "churning" and battering itself. The mass had swayed off to the west bank and was piling up against the ledges on the opposite side. The mighty pressure of the torrent kept rolling the logs, one over the other, till the top of the pile was in places thirty or forty feet out of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... and snagged trees projecting from the banks. Sharing that sweep of water with them, and coming up fast, was a full-sized tree. Twice its mat of branches caught on some snag, holding it back, and Ross breathed a little more freely, but it soon tore free again and rolled on, as menacing as a battering ram. ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... force were occupied all day with this work. The next day numbers of trees were felled and brought to the camp, and for the next two days the Danes were occupied in the manufacture of war-engines for battering down the walls. Edmund and Egbert utilized the time in instructing the soldiers who did not form part of the regular band, in the formation of the quadruple line of defence which the Danes had found it so impossible to break through, so that if ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... execute, was employed in the defence of Amida, and the works of Sapor were more than once destroyed by the fire of the Romans. But the resources of a besieged city may be exhausted. The Persians repaired their losses, and pushed their approaches; a large preach was made by the battering-ram, and the strength of the garrison, wasted by the sword and by disease, yielded to the fury of the assault. The soldiers, the citizens, their wives, their children, all who had not time to escape through the opposite gate, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... "The last battering engines," says he, "are philters, amulets, charms, images, and such unlawful meanes: if they cannot prevail of themselves by the help of bawds, panders, and their adherents, they will fly for succour to the devil himself. I know there be those that denye the devil can do any such thing, ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... added the fact that not only all materialism took possession of Darwinism as the irresistible battering-ram which, as they said, forever demolishes the whole fortress of theism and buries under its ruins all those who take refuge in this decaying castle, but that even naturalists let themselves be carried away without opposition by ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... tumbling and swearing and cursing, but going, the last able-bodied invader of saloon sanctity, bestowing upon its foul interior the first thorough washing it ever received, driving the despoilers before it with the force of a battering-ram, yet even then, unsatisfied, following up its victory. With perhaps half a dozen soldiers and as many mill-hands hauling on the slack of the hose behind him, through a north window came the tall, slender, serious-faced ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... of the Assembly, Scott, were all occupied and barricaded. It was about the church that the fiercest fighting took place. The artillery was brought to bear on the building; but the stout masonry resisted the battering of the cannon balls, and is still standing, dinted and scarred. Some of the Royals then got into the presbytery and set fire to it. Under cover of the smoke the rest of the regiment then doubled ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... withstand a battering ram," O'Sullivan said. "I noticed, as I went out, that it was solid oak some four inches thick, with two bolts as well as the lock, and, moreover, if we could get through it we should be no nearer escaping than we are at present. What with the corridors ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... hands and a pounding heart that nearly bore me down, it acted so like a battering ram on the inside, I drew a delicately scented envelope from my mailbox ... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... forms of luxuriant foliage, had completely changed the aspect of the country. The men were glad to wear the suits of drill and the sun-helmet which had now been issued. Thus May merged into June; the fourth great German attack was battering at the gates of Compiegne, but the Italian front had as yet given no sign. On our next visit, however, to the line, it became known that a British offensive was to be launched in the middle of June. The usual conferences and rehearsals took place; detailed orders were issued, the very date became ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... Ammon, and to Judah in Jerusalem the defenced. For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he shook the arrows to and fro, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver. In his right hand was the divination for Jerusalem, to set battering rams, to open the mouth in the slaughter, to lift up the voice with shouting, to set battering rams against the gates, to cast up mounts, to build forts. And it shall be unto them as a vain divination in their sight, which have sworn oaths unto them: but he ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... a virtue must be free and not forced. Virtue may be defended, as vice may be withstood, by a statute, but no virtue is or can be created by a law, any more than by a battering ram a temple or obelisk can ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... return, from the hut. One of the men carrying the beam fell, as did an officer who was leading them; but instantly another caught up the end of the timber, and in a moment a crowd were clustered round the door. Several caught hold of the beam, and swung it as though they meant to use it as a battering ram. ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... the concierge pronounced a fine eulogy on people who never stayed out all night and then came battering at the lodge gate during hours which even a gendarme held sacred to sleep. He also discoursed eloquently upon the beauties of temperance, and took an ostentatious draught from the fountain in ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... them down into the fleet. The valiant Trojans, when they saw the sons Of Dares, one beside his chariot slain, And one by flight preserved, through all their host 35 Felt consternation. Then Minerva seized The hand of fiery Mars, and thus she spake. Gore-tainted homicide, town-battering Mars! Leave we the Trojans and the Greeks to wage Fierce fight alone, Jove prospering whom he will, 40 So shall we not provoke our father's ire. She said, and from the fight conducted forth The impetuous Deity, whom on the side She seated of Scamander deep-embank'd.[3] And now the host ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... now. This was to be no play at war, but a grim, relentless struggle. They came en masse, rushing recklessly forward across the open space, pressing upon each other in headlong desire to be first, yelling like fiends, guns brandished in air, or spitting fire, animated by but one purpose—the battering of a way into that cabin. I know not who led them—all I saw was a mass of half-naked bodies bounding toward me, long hair streaming, copper faces aglow, weapons glittering in the light. Yes, I saw more—the meaning of that fierce rush; the instrument of ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... both land and naval forces rested with the Spanish, but, having met with failure after failure, they were ready at length to give way to the French, who promised to capture the stronghold by constructing a powerful fleet of battering-ships, enabling them to fight at close range, so that gun to gun and man to man ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... continued to move, as of yore, in cavalcade through his subject city. The burghers bowed as obsequiously as ever when they could not avoid meeting him. There were the old lordly perquisitions—thunderings at iron-studded doors, battering-rams set between posts, and the clouds of dust flying from the driven lintels, the screams of maids, the crying of women, a stray corpse or two flung on to the street, and then the procession as before, arms and legs, with ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... but especially when my uncle Toby was so unfortunate as to say a syllable about cannons, bombs, or petards—my father would exhaust all the stores of his eloquence (which indeed were very great) in a panegyric upon the Battering-Rams of the ancients—the Vinea which Alexander made use of at the siege of Troy.—He would tell my uncle Toby of the Catapultae of the Syrians, which threw such monstrous stones so many hundred feet, and shook the strongest bulwarks from their ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... on the shore to contest his landing, and shouting shrilly to him to be off, for it was long past Lock-out Time. This, with much brandishing of their holly-leaves, and also a company of them carried an arrow which some boy had left in the Gardens, and this they were prepared to use as a battering-ram. ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... kind marked McClellan's conduct of the battle. Time and again he hurled his heavy battalions against his opponent's left, center and right in a desperate effort to pierce the wall of gray, and once or twice his heroic veterans almost succeeded in battering their way through. But at every crisis Lee rose to the emergency and moved his regiments as a skillful chess player manipulates his pieces on the board, now massing his troops at the danger point and now diverting his adversary's ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... servants and gillies had gathered, hastily clad; they were met by Logan, who briefly bade some bring hammers, and the caber, or pine-tree trunk that is tossed in Highland sports. It would make a good battering-ram. Donald Macdonald he sent at once to Mr. Macrae. He met Bude and Lady Bude, and rapidly explained that there was no danger of fire. The Countess went back to her rooms, Bude returned with Logan into the observatory. Here they found Donald telegraphing to the conspirators, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o'ersways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O! how shall summer's honey breath hold out, Against the wrackful siege of battering days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays? O fearful meditation! where, alack, Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? O! none, unless this ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... Tristram, well may he be valiant and full of prowess that hath such a sort of noble knights unto his kin, and full like is he to be a noble man that is their leader and governor. He meant it by Sir Launcelot du Lake. So when Sir Tristram had beholden them long he thought shame to see two hundred knights battering upon twenty knights. Then Sir Tristram rode unto the King with the Hundred Knights and said: Sir, leave your fighting with those twenty knights, for ye win no worship of them, ye be so many and they so few; and wit ye well they will not out of the field I see by ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... of encouraging the youngster, Finn would lower himself to the ground, head well out, and, covering his eyes and muzzle with his two fore legs, would allow Jan to plunge like a little battering-ram upon the top of his head, furiously digging into the wolfhound's wiry coat in futile pursuit of flesh-hold for his teeth, and still exhausting fifty per cent. of his energies ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... gauntlet hid under his canonical shirt, draws it on like a mitten, and then, with his clenched fist, souse he fell on the catchpole and mauled him like a devil; the junior gauntlets dropped on him likewise like so many battering rams. Remember the wedding by this, by that, by these blows, said they. In short, they stroked him so to the purpose that he pissed blood out at mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, and was bruised, thwacked, battered, bebumped, and crippled at the back, neck, breast, arms, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... clung to their position, and, again swinging round the two pieces with which they had been playing on the ships, they resumed the bombardment of the fort, in the hope of battering in a breach through which the place might be carried by storm, or compelling its surrender before the approaching reinforcements could arrive from ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... MacMorrogh. If you, or your brother Dan, ever find it necessary to go after Ford, don't give him notice by battering down doors. You won't, I know. But about the contract: you haven't heard from ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... outside the machinery of party was profoundly dissatisfied with the parliamentary system and with all its doings and undoings; and this general dissatisfaction was being quaintly expressed by a refusal to let Parliament rise. The Women Chartists were battering at its closed doors; and from peep-holes and other points of vantage within, smiling and indifferent legislators saw those bruised bodies, those strangely obsessed minds, those indomitable spirits carried off to magisterial lack of judgment ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... each man about two feet from the next,[*] leaving no gaps between each division from end to end of the lines. The men are set in eight long ranks. This is the normal "phalanx"[] order. Only those in front can actually lunge and strike at the enemy. The men in the rear will add to the battering force of the charge, and crowding in closely, wedge themselves promptly to the front, when any of the first rank ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... sprawling again. Then he himself caught one well-aimed blow, and went staggering; but before slow-moving and raging Jan could follow up his advantage, with a lightning-like quickness the Butterfly Man made a battering ram of his head, caught Jan in the pit of the stomach, and even as he fell Jan went down, too, and went down underneath. Desperately, fighting like a fiend, John Flint kept him down. And presently using ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... a beam, he ran to a neighbouring pile of timber, and, with the aid of some others, returned bearing a battering-ram, which would soon have dashed in the door, if it had not been opened by Bacri himself, who had returned just in time to attempt to save his house ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... that President Madison has sent several protests, and, in spite of Connecticut and New Jersey, will send an ultimatum within three months. He believes that Britain has all she can manage, with Napoleon and his allies battering at her doors, and ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... being in such close quarters to me, and my holding my rifle with one hand, while I endeavoured to free myself with the other, I could not point the muzzle at my assailant, and my only way of clearing myself from his hold was by battering his head with the butt end of the weapon with my right hand, while he still clung round my left side. At last I disengaged myself, and he let go suddenly, and slipped instantly behind one of the thick acacia bushes, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... and gave the ball a kick that nearly burst it, and down it came exactly between O'Riley and Grim, who chanced to be far ahead of the others. Grim dashed at it. "Och! ye big villain," muttered the Irishman to himself, as he put down his head and rushed against the carpenter like a battering-ram. ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... week ago (9th May) his vanguard, on the sudden, cut to pieces our poor Bavarian 8,000, and their poor Minuzzi, who were covering Braunau, and has ended him and them;—Minuzzi himself prisoner, not to be heard of or beaten more;—and is battering Braunau ever since. That is the sad fact, whatever the theory may have been. Prince Karl is rolling in from the east; Lobkowitz (Prag now ended) is advancing from the northward, Khevenhuller from the Salzburg southern quarter: Is it ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Marius. The eclipse of such a light was decidedly impossible. Now and then, she heard sharp shocks in the distance, and she said: "It is odd that people should be opening and shutting their carriage gates so early." They were the reports of the cannon battering the barricade. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... from eight to ten tons, and the speed was about 20 miles per hour, with a pressure of from 40 to 50 lb. The rails were light; they were jointed in the chairs, which were generally carried on stone blocks, thus affording most excellent anvils for the battering to pieces of the ends of the rails—that is to say, for the destruction of the very parts where they were most vulnerable. The engines were not competent to draw heavy trains, and it was a common practice to have at the foot of an incline a shed containing a "bank engine," which ran out after the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... no voice through the howling wind and battering rain. Then Sally's wail sounded, and Grandma's call: "Rose-Ellen! Jimmie! Dick! ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... but triumphant. He had roused the two stable orderlies. They would open up in a minute. They did, with much blinking of eyes and some demur, but stood abashed when the burly major strode in, big Jim Ennis at his heels. The latter hesitated not one second. His weight went in with the battering ram of that muscular leg and massive foot, and the sergeant's door flew open before them. The room was empty. Fitzroy and Fitzroy's furs were gone. Nor was that all. Snatching a stable lantern from the hand of one of the shaking ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... their temples and necks and other parts, adorned with golden garlands, with fine white tusks long and thick as plough-shafts, worthy of carrying kings on their backs, capable of bearing every kind of noise on the field of battle, with huge bodies, capable of battering down the walls of hostile towns, of the colour of new-formed clouds, and each possessing eight she-elephants. With this wealth, O king, I ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... saying those few expressive words than there was an awful crash, and the front door, struck by some sort of battering ram, seemed to be partly knocked from its hinges. The Uhlans were apparently determined to enter; and the more opposition they met the greater their ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... have been held by the Confederacy. The Duke of Nemours confessed that there were occasions when they never would have been able to sustain a determined onslaught, and they were daily expecting to see the Prince of Bearne battering triumphantly at their gates. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... regions adjoining Flanders, whom we commonly call Picards. But, notwithstanding this, the police, rushing upon these men who they saw were unarmed and innocent, killed some, wounded others, and handled others mercilessly, battering them with the blows they inflicted on them. But some of them escaping by flight lay hid in dens and caverns. And among the wounded it was found that there were two clerks, rich and of great influence, who died, one of them being by race a man of Flanders, ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... fish's offspring. For a long time his favourite pastime, whenever his mother's back was turned, was to build walls and houses of herrings; and he would also play at soldiers on the marble slab, arranging the red gurnets in confronting lines, pushing them against each other, and battering their heads, while imitating the sound of drum and trumpet with his lips; after which he would throw them all into a heap again, and exclaim that they were dead. When he grew older he would prowl about his aunt Claire's stall ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... away at his pipe as if entirely satisfied with his lot. He was still watching the brougham when a surface-car came gliding swiftly around a curve. There was a smash of splintering wood and breaking glass. The car had struck the brougham a battering-ram blow, crushing a rear wheel and snapping the steel ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... how his fortune was going to be made on the best terms of Messrs. Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick, even if he hit the girls with all the force of a battering-ram, but he promised to keep the idea in mind, and remained in his trance a trifle longer than might otherwise have been necessary, endeavoring to select the unquestionably correct hero for his story, and Osborne was the result. Osborne was moderately witty. His repartee ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... with each other like powerful battering rams, and for what? Perhaps for undisputed possession of a city or two, a matter they must be ashamed of did they but call to mind what they have received from God. They would be constrained to exclaim: "What are we doing that we injure one another—we ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... there been employed to batter the wall, he ordered a constant watch to be kept for any ships seen approaching, as Bonaparte would hardly have hoped to take so strong a place as Acre without heavy guns, and had doubtless arranged for a battering-train to be sent from Alexandria by sea. This would probably be ordered to make either for Jaffa, or for Caiffa, a small port a few miles south of Acre. The Theseus was at once sent down to Jaffa, to prevent any landing ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... well how to begin with quiet beauty and serene grace: the hurrying measures, the crowding epithets, and startling imagery of the northern poetry suited his intoxicated fancy. His "Thor battering the Serpent" was such a favorite that he presented it to the Academy as his admission gift. Such was his love of terrific subjects, that he was known among his brethren by the name of Painter in ordinary to the Devil, and he smiled when some one officiously told him ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... was written, all the politicians of the earth were deciding, in their various coffee-houses, what all the monarchs were to do with the Eastern question. Stopford and Napier were better employed, in battering down the fortifications of Acre, and the politicians were soon relieved from their care of the general concerns of Europe. England settled this matter as she had often done before, and by the means which she has always found more natural than protocols. But a curious question is raised ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Lord Mansfield, Sir William Blackstone, and the King himself. He magnified mole-hills into mountains, inflamed pin-scratches into deadly wounds, and at last abandoned his course in despair at the very time when he might have pursued it with the most effect. But while he was battering the ministry upon paltry topics, which had neither root or stem, he had declared himself emphatically and repeatedly upon their side on the only subject on which their fate and the destiny of the nation ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... the barrier which Napoleon intended to surmount, that he might fall upon the rear of the Austrians, who were battering down the walls of Genoa, where Massena was besieged, and who were thundering, flushed with victory, at the very gates of Nice. Over this wild mountain pass, where the mule could with difficulty tread, and ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... before her, lights went up and down, the rose window whirled overhead, presences filled the air, heaven flashed away, and the earth shook it ecstasy. Then in the heavenly light, to the crash of drums, above the screaming of the women and the battering of feet, in one thunder-peal of worship ten thousand voices hailed ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... upright in a French diligence, upon a dark, tempestuous night, and surrounded on all sides by the dreadful presence of "red-handed war." The last thing I remember ere the drowsy god "MURPHY" sent his fairies to weave their cobwebs about my eyelids, was "OLD CONNECTICUT." She didn't look like the battering-ram that she was. She had taken that chignon for a pillow, and fastened it to the back of the seat. Her head was thrown back; her chin had fallen, and at the extreme tip of her thin red nose a solitary tear glistened like a dew-drop on a beet. Once, about midnight, she awoke me by her snoring, ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... wonder, since wise authors show, That best foundations must be low: And now the duke has wisely ta'en him To be his architect at Blenheim. But raillery at once apart, If this rule holds in every art; Or if his grace were no more skill'd in The art of battering walls than building, We might expect to see next year A mouse-trap man ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... too soon for me to look to my own part; for my head was scarce back at the window, before five men, carrying a spare yard for a battering-ram, ran past me and took post to drive the door in. I had never fired with a pistol in my life, and not often with a gun; far less against a fellow-creature. But it was now or never; and just as they swang the yard, I cried out: "Take that!" and ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and dwelt upon the banks of the River Bagrada, where it used to devour the Roman soldiers as they went to fetch water. It had such tough scales that they were obliged to attack it with their engines meant for battering city walls, and only succeeded with much difficulty ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... then throb, throb, throb, with each throb a jet of sperm shot out against the mouth of the orifice I had not penetrated, I lost my power in the contentment of a copious emission, and the pleasurable certainty, that no prick had yet been up the hole against which mine had been battering. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... of that fop Brummel's reply to the gentleman who offered him his carriage in a shower, "But where will you ride, then?"—and what accusing silences, and what searching and irresistible speeches, battering down all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... and Halliday in the lead and the others trailing on close behind, they came down the middle of the street on a half run, plainly revealed in the bright moonlight. They expected to find the Democrats battering down the jail door, if they were not already taking the prisoner out, and all their attention was turned toward that building. Presently they saw that the entrance and all the street round about were silent and apparently ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... than they had been while the canoe was being whirled down the river. It looked as if they had been saved from one death only to face a worse. With all their might they clung side by side. Dripping wet, half-blinded and bruised by the battering they got as the trunk smashed from side to side of the narrow passage, the indomitable American pluck of the two lads yet ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... was turned towards me, had a certain bend of effort in it as if my friend still needed some holding down. Suddenly that broad back swayed hither and thither. It was swaying on one leg; Basil, somehow, had hold of the other. Burrows' huge fists and those of the footman were battering Basil's sunken head like an anvil, but nothing could get the giant's ankle out of his sudden and savage grip. While his own head was forced slowly down in darkness and great pain, the right leg of his captor was being forced in the air. Burrows swung to and fro with a purple face. Then suddenly ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... shaky and dizzy," Arthur said, as he stood leaning on Adam's arm; "that blow of yours must have come against me like a battering-ram. I don't believe I ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... proudly led the way and stooped to examine the stones near the ruined arch that had been the chapel door. Alas! there was not a sign of the inscription which Dickie had scratched on the stone when the Roundheads were battering at the gates ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... followers, of whom they had several, was despatched to ride at a hand-gallop to the village of Chilton, and rouse the Constable, while another was sent to Oxford for a Magistrate's warrant to arrest Lord Fareham on the charge of abduction. And meanwhile the battering upon thick oaken panels with stout riding-whips, and heavy sword-hilts, and the calling upon those within, were repeated with unabated vehemence, while a couple of horsemen rode round the house to examine other inlets, and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... new towers, which had replaced the burnt ones, were brought up close to the walls, and plied the new machines which Cyprian and Phoenician engineers had constructed for their new master.[14399] The battering of the wall began. Engines moreover of a large size were placed on horse-transports furnished by Sidon, and on the heavier and clumsier of the triremes, and with these attacks were made upon the town in various places, all round ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... been fumbling over books And thinking about God and the Devil and all, Other young men have been battling with the days And others have been kissing the beautiful women. They have brazen faces like battering-rams. But I who think about books and such— I crumble to impotent dust before the struggling, And the women palsy me with fear. But when it comes to fumbling over books And thinking about God and the Devil and all, Why, there I am. But perhaps the battering-rams are ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... retreat? If we canna get through him, we had better get ower him. I've helped ye across a dyke afore, Maister John, and there ye go." Claverhouse, jumping on Grimond, who made a back for him, went over the Dutchman's shoulders. Then he seized the Dutchman by his arm, while Grimond acted as a battering-ram behind: so they pulled what remained of him, like a cork out of the mouth of a bottle, and Grimond followed his master. Collier, who had been covering the retreat, left his horse to its fate, and ran by the ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... in which the sixteen occupants of the place were lodged, unsuspicious of danger. Troyes approached at night. Iberville and Sainte-Helene with a few followers climbed the palisade on one side, while the rest of the party burst the main gate with a sort of battering ram, and rushed in, yelling the war-whoop. In a moment, the door of the blockhouse was dashed open, and its astonished inmates captured ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... endeavoured to unburden himself of an oration was speedily gagged and hustled down to make way for the great "Bergeret lui-meme," who, in all the glory of a red scarf and tassels, waved his hat and struggled to be heard above the general hubbud of music, voices, and battering of bronze. "Citizens," he said, "the 26th of Floreal will be memorable in our history. Thus we triumph over military despotism, that bloody negation of the rights of man. The First Empire placed the collar of servitude about ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... stops, seems to meditate, starts on its course again, shoots like an arrow from one end of the vessel to the other, whirls around, slips away, dodges, rears, bangs, crashes, kills, exterminates. It is a battering ram capriciously assaulting a wall. Add to this the fact that the ram is of metal, the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... from the stern must have torn the ground as if by a mammoth plow; the figures of men must have scattered like leaves in a gusty wind. The ship itself was racked and shuddering with the impact of the battering thrust, but it rose like a rocket, though canted on one wing, and the crashing branches of wind-torn trees marked its passage on a long, curving slant that bent upward into the dark. Within the control room Walter Harkness grinned happily ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... greaves and bucklers of his donjon-keep with as gallant a troop of Christian bandits as ever stepped in Italy. He had his sword, Excalibur, with him. His beautiful countess and her young daughter waved him a tearful adieu from the battering-rams and buttresses of the fortress, and he galloped away ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for this stubborn retirement: it was to gain time for Brussilov to get his men out of their perilous positions and to join the main line again with Dmitrieff's receding ranks. If this could be effected, the fatal gap between them—made by Von Mackensen's battering-ram—would be repaired, and they could once more present a united front to the enemy. It was mentioned a little farther back that the Austrians had pierced the Dunajec line at Otfinow, north of Tarnow, by which was cut in two the hitherto unbroken ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... fanatics had, if possible, a still greater love for a beating. Carre de Montgeron, who relates the circumstance, was unable to satisfy her with sixty blows of a large sledge-hammer. He afterwards used the same weapon with the same degree of strength, for the sake of experiment, and succeeded in battering a hole in a stone wall at the twenty-fifth stroke. Another woman, named Sonnet, laid herself down on a red-hot brazier without flinching, and acquired for herself the nickname of the Salamander; while others, desirous of a more illustrious martyrdom, attempted to crucify themselves. M. Deleuze, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... following pinched out, and even he, champion acrobat of the cliffs, could neither climb up nor find a way down. For several minutes we faced each other, ten yards apart. I had heard that mountain sheep never attack men, and that even the big leaders never use their massive, battering ram heads to injure anyone. With this in mind I moved up to within ten feet when a movement of his haughty head stopped me. Somehow in his action was the suggestion that he might forget tradition. One bump of his huge head ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... so fast, and the deck-hatch bolted tight, it was plain that I would have to smash something in order to get out of the cabin. Had I had anything to use as a battering ram, I would have begun on the door. But there seemed nothing to hand that would help me in that way. I examined the crack where the top of the door and the deck-hatch came together. Had I something to pry with I might tear the bolts holding the ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... before the advance could be continued. Furthermore, the fortresses also acted as a barrier, protecting the approaches to Kieff, enabling the undisturbed concentration of an army in that protected zone while the enemy would be busily occupied in battering his way through the fortress triangle. The latter were still more strengthened by the Rivers Ikwa and Styr, which flow to the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Heroner is a long-winged hawk for the heron. The Hyppe is the berye of the sweet bryer or eglantine. Nowell meaneth more than Christmas. Porpherye is a peculiar marble, not marble in common. Sendale, a sylke stuffe. The trepegett is not the battering-ram, but an engine to cast stones. Wiuer or Wyvern, a serpent like unto a dragon. Autenticke meaneth a thing of auctoritye, not of antiquitye. Abandone is not liberty though Hollyband sayeth so. Of the Vernacle. Master Thynne would read Campaneus for ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... absolutely teeming with a living burden. Perched in every available nook and corner were women and children of all ages, and weapons and live stock of all varieties. Now, a child—lively, mischievous, inquisitive—peered forth over the head of a battering-ram. Now, a lean, hungry sheep advanced his inquiring nostrils sadly to the open air, and displayed by the movement the head of a withered old woman pillowed on his woolly flanks. Here, appeared a young girl ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... in the human understanding, remain, though all theologies may be in doubt. If the idea of Providence be a superstition, why should not man guide his life by good sense and moderation? Bayle did not attack existing beliefs with the battering-ram: he quietly removed a stone here and a stone there from the foundations. If he is aggressive, it is by means of a tranquil irony. The errors of human-kind are full of curious interest; the disputes of theologians are both curious and amusing; the moral licences of men and women are ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... March ye, without feint and dolour, By the banner of your clan, In your garb of many a colour, Quelling onset to a man. Then, to see you swiftly baring From the sheath the manly glaive, Woe the brain-shed, woe the unsparing Marrow-showering of the brave! Woe the clattering, weapon-battering Answering to the piobrach's yell! When your racing speeds the chasing, Wide and far the clamours swell. Hard blows whistle from the bristle Of the temples to the thigh, Heavy handed as the land-flood, Who will turn ye, or make fly? Many a man has drunk an ocean ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... mother!" gasped the lovely trembler in my arms. A moment more, and the old lady was battering at the door. I had locked it within. Her voice, husky but subdued, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Early on the 13th a general attack was made by land-batteries and sea-batteries, and a perpetual fire was poured upon the fortress from over 300 pieces of the heaviest artillery. Eliott directed his red-hot shot chiefly against the battering ships, and at last during the night two of them caught fire. In the confusion which ensued Captain Curtis, commanding a small naval brigade, brought out his gunboats and completed the enemy's discomfiture. Nine of the battering-ships blew up, and the tenth was burnt by Curtis's boats. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... my mind that there would be a brutal rush at the door, perhaps with pickaxes, perhaps with one of the swinging battering-rams I had read of in the Roman wars, that do such wondrous things when cradled in the ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... noise about, young gentleman?" asked the stranger. "Why are you battering my property in that ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... good store of food and arms. No one had ever taken that fortress, nor did any one believe that it could be stormed. But Pope and Emperor were young and brave and angry, and they had a great army, and the people of Rome were with them, every man. They used such engines as they had,—catapults, and battering-rams, and ladders; and yet Crescenzio laughed, for the stone walls were harder than the stone missiles, and higher than the tallest ladders, and so thick that fire could not heat them from without, nor battering-ram loosen a single block in a single course; and many assaults were repelled, and ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... better off here than battering about outside, and knocking the ship to pieces," observed Mr Pincott, the carpenter. "Now, if we could but get a fresh spar for a topmast, we should soon be ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the future, intelligence sapping faith, opinion dethroning belief, the world shaking off Rome. It was the prognostication of the philosopher who sees human thought, volatilized by the press, evaporating from the theocratic recipient. It was the terror of the soldier who examines the brazen battering ram, and says:—"The tower will crumble." It signified that one power was about to succeed another power. It meant, "The press will ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... in northern China, just south of the Mongolian frontier, is a range of mountains inhabited by bands of wild sheep. They are wonderful animals, these sheep, with horns like battering-rams. But the mountains are also populated by brigands and the two do not form an agreeable ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... downward. Bound as he was, the victim could see below him a brick wall right across the path of his descent. He was helpless to move; it was useless to cry out. For all that, as he felt in imagination the crushing shock of his head driven like a battering-ram against this wall, he uttered a roar such as from Achilles might have roused armed nations to battle. And even as he did so, his head touched the wall, there was a crash, and Stevens lay safe on a mattress after his ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Ben, coolly; "they'll knock up an earthwork before morning, and set the guns in a position for battering ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... drowned in it. A feeding cow flicked an automatic tail under a tree. Near the low mud wall that strolled irresolutely between the house and the hills leaned a bush with a few single pink roses; their petals were floating down under the battering drops. A draggled bee tried to climb to a dry place on a pillar of the veranda. Above all, the hills, immediate, towering, all grey and green, solidly ideal, with phantasies of mist. Everything drippingly soft and silent. Suddenly the venetian blind that hung ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... heart-rending sight mortal eyes have seldom seen. The father, the mother, the saint-like sister, the innocent and helpless children, had found but a momentary refuge from cannibals, who were roaring like wolves around the hall, and battering at the doors to break in and slake their vengeance with blood. It was seriously apprehended that the mob would make a rush, and sprinkle the blood of the royal family upon the very floor of the sanctuary where they had sought ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... suddenly,—and its cessation created an effect of silence even amid the noise of the crackling fire and the continued grave music of the organ. Then came a quick tramp of many feet—a hubbub of voices—and loud battering knocks at the chapel ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... and it is this mingling of feelings with which we all can sympathize that makes him, in spite of all his crimes, a human being like ourselves. But in Richard there is no human complexity. His is the fearful simplicity of the lightning, the battering-ram, the earthquake, forces whose achievements are terrible and whose inner existence a blank. Richard hammers his bloody way through life like the legendary Iron Man with his flail, awe-inspiring as a destructive agency, ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Cyrus, thus assured of the general consent to his proposals, said, "If we really wish to carry out what we have set ourselves, we must prepare battering-rams and siege engines, and get together mechanics and builders for our own castles." [21] Thereupon Cyaxares at once undertook to provide an engine at his own expense, Gadatas and Gobryas made themselves responsible for a second, ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... SYRACUSE. Sconce, call you it? so you would leave battering, I had rather have it a head: an you use these blows long, I must get a sconce for my head, and ensconce it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders.—But I pray, sir, why ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... you are hesitating at what most men would jump at," she retorted, suddenly conscious of strained nerves and feeling as if she were battering impotently against a granite rock-face. His hands clenched but he did not reply and swift contrition fell on her. She turned to him impulsively. "Forgive me, Barry. I shouldn't have said that, but I want this thing so desperately. I am convinced that ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... thud of the hatchets, but they rang much more hollow, and the two defenders expected to see part of the wall go down at any moment. Suddenly the sound of hatchets ceased and some of the noise subsided. Lonagon peeped through a crack, and saw half a dozen Indians coming up with a battering-ram in the shape of a felled tree. They approached at a wide angle, out of ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... extreme right. Stoner dashed in on the left with the Ninth Kentucky, at a swift run. He burst into the houses occupied by the enemy at the edge of the town, and with slight loss, compelled the inmates to surrender. The enemy had no artillery, and ours was battering the bricks about their heads in fine style. Palmer, who was a capital officer—cool and clearheaded—concentrated his fire upon the building where the flag floated, and the enemy seemed thickest, and moved his six pounders into the very edge of the town. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... resembling the Roman testudo. It was framed of wood, covered with hides, and mounted on wheels, so that, being rolled forwards to the foot of the besieged wall, it served as a shed, or cover, to defend the miners, or those who wrought the battering ram, from the stones and arrows of the garrison. In the course of the famous defence, made by Black Agnes, Countess of March, of her husband's castle of Dunbar, Montague, Earl of Salisbury, who commanded the ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... educational organization. Mrs. Willard, however, declined the nomination, refusing to be drawn into Susan's rebellion.[41] Susan, nevertheless, left the convention satisfied that she had driven an entering wedge into Professor Davies' male stronghold, and she continued battering at this stronghold whenever she had an opportunity. She meant to put women in office and to win approval for coeducation ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... take the world by its ears and conquer their fate, while women, metaphorically speaking, were forced to sit with tied hands and patiently suffer as the waves of fate tossed them hither and thither, battering and bruising without mercy. Familiarity made me used to this yoke; I recovered from the disappointment of being a girl, and was reconciled to that part of my fate. In fact, I found that being a girl was quite pleasant until a hideous truth dawned ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... deal of the greater quiet of London after New York. I think that what you notice is a difference in the quality of the noise in London. What is with us mainly a harsh, metallic shriek, a grind of trolley wheels upon trolley tracks, and a wild battering of their polygonized circles upon the rails, is in London the dull, tormented roar of the omnibuses and the incessant cloop-cloop of the cab-horses' hoofs. Between the two sorts of noise there is little choice for one who abhors both. The real difference is that in ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... His companion is much better, though he has a strong 'tocco di tedesco'. They both spoke well of you, and so far I liked them both. How go you on with the amiable little Blot? Does she listen to your Battering tale? Are you numbered among the list of her admirers? Is Madame———your Madame de Lursay? Does she sometimes knot, and are you her Meilcour? They say she has softness, sense, and engaging manners; in such an apprenticeship much may be learned.—[This whole ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... sinister figures, flitting and stalking through the land—the law-maker with his spoils, the rioter with his rock, the anarchist with his bomb, the assassin thrusting out his black hand, the lyncher with his battering ram, his rope and his rifle; these are some of the outside lawless who conspire with the inside lawless to make a scarecrow of American law, making it the perch and not the terror of the birds of ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Rayburn. And as we lifted the stretcher our hearts bounded, for at that instant there was a tremendous crash at the grating; whereby we knew that those without had brought to bear against it some sort of a battering-ram that they might beat ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... to render the children she had sometimes performed for himself, with results for which he could not be grateful enough, and yet it was not with unalloyed anticipation that he softly followed her up the stair. Mrs. Burton went into the chamber and found the boys playing battering-ram, each with a ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... Then ensued a battering at the door, but it stood like a rock. They were tiring at that game. It hurt them, and did no good. There was silence for the space of some minutes, and then the sound of scraping ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... knows how to hurl stones and shoot arrows; he knows how to cut and thrust, and, above all, he has the onrush of a wild beast, which is lacking in the mild Egyptians altogether. We break the enemy by this, that our trained and drilled regiments are like a battering ram: it is necessary to beat down one-half of our men before the column is injured. But when the column is broken, there ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... shrapnel bullets on several premises. Shrapnel has no battering force. Its object is to kill or disable men. It can do no harm to walls. Its employment in this instance was a wanton act intended to inspire terror and doubtless augmented the loss of ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own freedom; which feeling is its Baphometic baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battering, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated.' Here is a"—....—Sun ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... that had been employed against the Boyne, were also much shattered by Morning, when they were likewise ordered to come off; the former having lost her Captain, and both many Men killed and wounded. The Suffolk and Tilbury happening to anchor well to the Northward, lay battering till the next Evening (and with some Success, particularly against the Breach) when the Admiral sent Orders for them to draw off. The Army now began to look on the Breach as accessible, but the Guns in the Barradera Battery, being able to annoy them in their Attack, a Representation ...
— An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, with explanatory notes and observations • Sir Charles Knowles
... cut down some years ago by a party of men, who, I think, should have been sent to prison for the deed. It took five men twenty-five days to cut it through with augers and saws, and then they were obliged to use a great wedge and a battering-ram to make ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... my head like a maddened animal. The seas outside assailed our bows, and their fury thrilled me, and seemed a part of my desire to slay. I tore off my jacket and started for the scuttle with the belaying-pin gripped in my hand, bent on battering down the barrier which kept us ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... abatement in the storm. The ice was deep under a coating of slush, and quite impassable for dogs and men, and the sea was pounding and battering at the outer edge, as the roar of smashing ice testified, though quite shut out from view by driving snow. There was nothing to do but follow the shore, a long way around, ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... Do not think this a meaningless or uncertain sign; fear, arising from the things they foresee, has changed their custom." Why say more? He inflamed the hearts of his soldiers to attack Aquileia again. Constructing battering rams and bringing to bear all manner of engines of war, they quickly forced their way into the city, laid it waste, divided the spoil and so cruelly devastated it as scarcely to leave a trace to be seen. ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... that La Corriveau emerged from the gloomy woods of Beauport, on her return to the city, the night of the murder of Caroline, two horsemen were battering at full speed on the highway that led to Charlebourg. Their dark figures were irrecognizable in the dim moonlight. They rode fast and silent, like men having important business before them, which demanded ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... rose from the crowd. Some one suggested burning the building. Another advised battering in the doors. A third intimated that shooting them full of holes were better. This idea, once voiced, spread like an infection. The childish people were eager to try ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... mob got an iron rail and used it as a battering ram against the lobby doors. Sheriff McLendon tried to stop them, and some one of the mob knocked him down with a chair. Still he counseled moderation and would not order his deputies and the police to disperse the crowd by force. The pacific policy of the sheriff ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett |
