"Crowbar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you were escaping in good earnest. The wall between the two towers is, to my knowledge, at one place not over two feet thick; and on the other side, where there are nothing but bare grounds and the old ramparts, they never put a sentinel. I will get you a crowbar and a pickaxe, and you make a hole ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... down an old house recently, rent it part from part with my own hands and a crowbar, piling it in its constituents, bricks with bricks, timber on ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... here's a crowbar lyin' by the gatepost. That Indian fetched it from the forge. It was used to pry out the bolts an' steeples. Tom, I reckon there wasn't much time lost forcin' ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... something has happened, and we must force open the door, my good girl,' I said by way of calming her. You may well judge, sir, that I did not send for a locksmith; but with a crowbar, hastily procured from below, I hoisted the door from its hangings and ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... the fatal chair. He dug around my rumbling molars with drawing-knives and burglars' tools, and cross-cut saws and patent rollers, and marlinspikes and two-foot rules. He climbed upon my lap and prodded with crowbar and with garden spade, to see that I was not defrauded of all the agony that's made. He pulled and yanked and pried and twisted, and uttered oft his battle shout, and now and then his wife assisted—till finally the teeth came out. ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... tricks are the hardest things that ever met me,' said the giant, 'but if I had my lever and my crowbar, I would not be long in making my way through this rock also,' but as he had not got them, he had to go home and fetch them. Then it took him but a short time to hew his way through ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... "I threw a crowbar across the stream one hundred yards up, and halted the procession. The plan, d'ye see, is for me, the coast being clear, to signal the launch to come ashore for its first cargo any time after ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... recent political event. Jemmy had managed to pass himself off as a shrewd, cunning, but withal very honest sort of fellow; he was, nevertheless, in heart and soul, a housebreaker of the first order. One night, Jemmy quitted his respectable abode, and, furnished with dark lantern, pistol, crowbar, and crape, joined half-a-dozen neophyte burglars—his pupils and his victims. The hostelry chosen for attack was "The Spaniards." The host and his servants were, however, on the alert; and, after a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... two-formed Pyretus? Why of Ampyx, who fixed his cornel-wood spear, without a point, full in the face of the four-footed Oeclus? Macareus, struck down the Pelethronian[41] Erigdupus,[42] by driving a crowbar into his breast. I remember, too, that a hunting spear, hurled by the hand of Nessus, was buried in the groin of Cymelus. And do not believe that Mopsus,[43] the son of Ampycus, only foretold things to come; a two-formed {monster} was slain by Mopsus, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... one hatchet, Greg another. Dan made a rush for the bow and arrow, fitting a steel tipped arrow to the string. Tom Reade espied the crowbar, and reached it in two bounds. Dave Darrin caught up a stick of firewood, Harry ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... he was about to quit in despair when he observed the flat iron plates, about five inches square and quarter of an inch thick, with a large hole in the centre of each, which formed the sockets that held the davits for suspending the ship's boats. A crowbar enabled him, after much trouble, to wrench off one of these. A handspike was, after some hours' labour, converted into a handle with one side cut flat. Laying the plate on this, he marked its exact size, ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... wasn't in human natur' to stand those large blue eyes (just like yours, Mary), darting fire at a poor fellow; and when Jones got up in a surly humour, and said it was time to go away, instead of walking home arm in arm, we went side by side, like two big dogs with their tails as stiff up as a crowbar, and ready for a fight; neither he nor I saying a word, and we parted without saying good-night. Well, I dreamed of your mother all that night, and the next day went to see her, and felt worser and worser each time, and she snubbed Jones, and at last told ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... form a little shelter from the wind for the vegetables, if ever there are any. Flax shelters the bed on the other side. The digging is rather laborious, as there are large stones which have to be extracted with a crowbar. The soil is first-rate, and so far no mildew has been met with. One of the greatest enemies to the seeds will be the fowls, and because of them probably we shall have to sow first in boxes. Graham has made a needle and mesh so that we can make nets. Repetto has shown us ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... followed, the telephonist fought to get his message through; he had to give up an attempt to speak it while a hatchet, a crowbar, and a pickaxe were noisily at work breaking out a fresh exit from the back of the cellar, and even after that work had been completed, it was difficult to make himself heard. He completed the urgent message for reenforcements at last, listened ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... Advance hither to the main body, Donax, with your crowbar; you, Simalio, to the left wing; you, Syriscus, to the right. Bring up the rest; where's the centurion Sanga, ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... point of a crowbar under the hasp, and the whole thing came away with a single metallic report. If any sleeper was awakened by the sound, hearing no other sounds, he probably fell asleep again. Anyhow no alarm ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... west end of the choir, as if a whole stack of big timber had fallen down a flight of stairs. Well, you can't expect me to tell you everything that happened all in a minute. Of course there was a terrible commotion. I heard the slab fall out, and the crowbar on the floor, and I heard ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... last hit on the right way, and should keep to it; that he and the world were better friends than they had been; that the only way to keep friends with the world was to treat it as a tamed tiger, and have one hand on a crowbar while one fondled the beast with the other. He enclosed me a bank-note, which somewhat more than covered his debt to me, and bade me pay him the surplus when he should claim it as a millionnaire. He gave me no address in his letter, but it bore the postmark of Godalming. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong. Block tackle and a strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even Leo ferox there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking hyena. (He glares) I possess the Indian sign. The glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers. (With a bewitching smile) I now introduce Mademoiselle ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... patient may with safety be flipped off with a dry board or stick. A live wire may be safely cut by an axe or hatchet with a dry wooden handle and the electric current may be short circuited by dropping a crowbar or a poker on the wire. They should be dropped on the side from which the current is coming and not on the further side as the latter will not short circuit the current before it has passed through the patient's ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... mate probably went forward to let the men out of the forecastle, while the fireman went aft to let the engine-room gang out of the sterncastle. They haven't had time to do it yet; they'll have to pry those rings out of the door with a crowbar. I'll go aft and drive the fireman forward; when I have them ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... deeper. Number one restates his case somewhat differently. Number two takes it up on its new ground. Argument is followed by vociferation and abuse; a momentary self-restraint by a fresh outbreak of self-assertion. All tempers come into play, all modes of attack are employed, from pounding with a crowbar to pricking with a pin. And where all this time is music? Where is the gold of truth? Spun over and blackened by the tissue of jangling sounds, as is the ceiling of the old church ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... yet he had not learnt that the complete burglar works alone. This time he knew two accomplices—women both, and one his own sister! A paltry pair of boots was the clue of discovery, and a goodly stretch was the proper reward of a clumsy indiscretion. So for twenty years he wavered between the crowbar and the prison house, now perfecting a brilliant scheme, now captured through recklessness or drink. Once when a mistake at Manchester sent him to the Hulks, he owned his failure was the fruit of brandy, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... harness, trappings, fittings, accouterments; barde[obs3]; equipment, equipmentage[obs3]; appointments, furniture, upholstery; chattels; paraphernalia &c. (belongings) 780. mechanical powers; lever, leverage; mechanical advantage; crow, crowbar; handspike[obs3], gavelock[obs3], jemmy[obs3], jimmy, arm, limb, wing; oar, paddle; pulley; wheel and axle; wheelwork, clockwork; wheels within wheels; pinion, crank, winch; cam; pedal; capstan &c. (lift) 307; wheel &c. (rotation) 312; inclined plane; wedge; screw; spring, mainspring; can hook, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... kabouters were told of this, they came together to work, night and day, in the mines. With pick and shovel, crowbar and chisel, and hammer and mallet, they broke up the rocks containing copper and tin. Then they built great roaring fires, to smelt the ore into ingots. They would show the teachers that the Dutch kabouters could make bells, as well as the men in the lands ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... the corners of the mouth which constantly betrays the lucky man of business. His abundant long hair was iron-gray and wiry—Erasmus Walker had seldom time to waste in getting it cut—his eyes were small and shrewd; his hand was firm, and gripped the pen in its grasp like a ponderous crowbar. His writing, Tyrrel could see, was thick, black, and decisive. Altogether the kind of man on whose brow it was written in legible characters that it's dogged as does it. The delicately organized Cornishman felt an instinctive dislike at once for this great coarse mountain of a bullying Teuton. ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... though 'lost to sight, to memory clear'; for I was just thinking, as I did her things, how clever she is to like all kinds of books that I don't understand at all, and to write things that make me cry with pride and delight. Yes, she's a talented dear, though she hardly knows a needle from a crowbar, and will make herself one great blot some of these days, when the 'divine afflatus' descends upon her, ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... embrowned by the sun that he might have passed for an Iroquois." In spite of Joseph's testimonial the "plagues of posting" are still in the ascendant, and Smollett is once more generous of good advice. Above all, he adjures us when travelling never to omit to carry a hammer and nails, a crowbar, an iron pin or two, a large knife, and a bladder of grease. Why not a lynch pin, which we were so carefully instructed how to inquire about in ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... bridge every window in the entire train was fastened down and there were strict orders against raising them. We discovered that under the boulders were carefully concealed large charges of dynamite ready for immediate use in case of invasion—so that Horatius need not be called upon while axe and crowbar were at work. The windows, it appears, were locked to prevent throwing out of lighted cigars ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... Captain, do you know what that means? And I could kill then—or be killed. I wish the crowbar had smashed my skull ten years ago. And I've got to live now. Without her. Do you understand? Perhaps many years. But how? What can be done? If I had allowed myself to look at her once I would have carried her off before that man ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... wintered at the fort, and a sun-dial still stands in rear of the house, a gift from the great explorer. We buried Joe Miller in the pine-shadowed graveyard near the fort. Hard work it was with pick and crowbar to prise up the ice-locked earth and to get poor Joe that depth which the frozen clay would seem to grudge him. It was long after dark when his bed was ready, and by the light of a couple of lanterns we laid him down ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... pressure of 935 lbs. per square inch. It is interesting to note that jets of very high-pressure water offer astonishing resistance to any attempt to deflect their course. A three-inch jet of 500-lb. water cannot be cut through by a blow from a crowbar. ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... of penguin meat. "That'll take two hours to dig out!" is the storeman's rejoinder, and to make good his word, proceeds to pull off blouse and helmet. By careful inquiry in the outer Hut he finds an ice-axe, crowbar and hurricane lantern. The next move is to the outer veranda, where a few loose boards are soon removed, and the storeman, with a lithe ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... "I shall be only too glad to get this slab up, if I can, but I am afraid we shall want a crowbar and more help. It's a heavy piece of stone, and I see no way ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... door—unsuccessfully, however, as it proved to be bolted on the inside. Thereupon the porter fetched a constable, and, after a consultation, we decided that we were justified in breaking open the door; the porter produced a crowbar, and by our unified efforts the door was eventually burst open. We entered, and—my God! Dr. Thorndyke, what a terrible sight it was that met our eyes! My brother-in-law was lying dead on the floor of the sitting-room. He had been stabbed—stabbed ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... no shade, and too done-up to feel. And charcoaled on the canvas bag ('twas written pretty clear) We read the message Marshall wrote. It said: 'I'm taken queer — I'm somewhere off of Deadman's Track, half-blind and nearly dead; Find Crowbar, get him sobered up, and follow ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... as to the kind of hero she was to train him into. She would not like him to be a 'Jack Sheppard,' for fear he might break into some lady's heart with a crowbar of his impudence. Nor would she like him to be a 'Eugene Aram,' for fear he should make a mistake and hang her some night instead of himself. He seemed fitter for a 'Jack Falstaff' than anything else. But Falstaff was too witty for a hero, and she thought, perhaps, that if he ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... "no injury of the head is so trivial as to be despised or so serious as to be despaired of." Injuries at first sight apparently slight may prove fatal from haemorrhage or infection; on the other hand, recovery has followed injuries of great severity—for example, the famous "American crowbar case," in which a bar of iron three and a half feet long and one and a half inches thick passed through the head, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... indignation; they were declared to be an incumbrance on the soil that ought to be removed. Landlords began to act upon this view: they began to evict, to exterminate, to consolidate; and in this fearful work the awful Famine of '47 became a powerful, and I fear in many cases even a welcome, auxiliary to the Crowbar Brigade.[56] ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... to look at, is it?" said he; "but it is a crowbar, chisel, hammer and wrench, all in one. It only took me two nights to cut ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... when he pointed it out to us, it was plainly visible. One of the detectives picked up a crowbar and others, still with the hastily selected implements they had seized to fight the fire, started in to ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... stick, used by both men and women in turning the earth in all irrigated sementeras for rice and camotes. It is also employed in digging around and prying out rocks to be removed from sementeras or needed for walls. It is spade, plow, pickax, and crowbar. A small per cent of the kay-kay is shod with an iron point, rendering them more efficient, especially in breaking up new ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... that way. It wasn't far from the end of the wall that was close to the lake. I set down and waited. It seemed to me like someone was trying to break a hole through the wall. I could hear it plunk, plunk, like someone was using a chisel or crowbar, soft and easy, like he didn't want to be heard. I waited to see what ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... the valve in the outlet pipe, and made a motion as though prying on a crowbar. He wanted to indicate that he needed some sort of lever to ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... Watkins, on his arrival with two virgin canvases, a brand-new easel, a paint-boy, portmanteau, an ingenious little ladder made in sections; (after the pattern of that lamented master, Charles Peace), crowbar, and wire coils, found himself welcomed with effusion and some curiosity by half a dozen other brethren of the brush. It rendered the disguise he had chosen unexpectedly plausible, but it inflicted upon him a considerable ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... himself, I think, and hope, never knew what hurt him. His skull was fractured by one stroke of the brute's paw. Signor Martigny escaped with his right arm slit into ribbons. Big Joe Pentland, the clown, with one well-directed stroke of a crowbar, smashed Old King of the Forest's jaw into a hundred pieces, but not before it had closed in the left breast of Charlie's mother. She lived for nearly an hour afterwards, but never uttered a syllable. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... time there were three sharp explosions, a shower of fragments rattled through the branches above our heads, and on going to inspect the result we found that the rock had been so shattered that it was an easy matter to pry out the pieces with pick and crowbar—a task of which Joe and ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... the repair of miles of washed-out tracks and shattered bridges. Every division superintendent of every line in the district, his assistants, usually with some high executive officer of the system in control; every man and boy able to handle a pick or shovel or crowbar, to carry his end of a girder or drag a coil of rope, ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... large cases he discovered, and forced them open with the crowbar, which Maxwell had dropped when he was struck insensible, but they contained nothing worth the labour of having them hoisted up. At last he was about to leave, after a careful search of more than an hour, when ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... calculation I was not deceived. By means of a crowbar I easily dislodged the bricks, and having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped it in that position, while with little trouble I relaid the whole structure as it originally stood. Having procured mortar, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... shoulder, measures three feet across the chest, 12 inches between the ears and 18 inches from ear to nose, and his weight is estimated by the best judges at from 1200 to 1600 pounds. He never has been weighed. In disposition he is independent and militant. He will fight anything from a crowbar to a powder magazine, and permit no man to handle him while he can move a muscle. And yet when he and I were acquainted—I have not seen him since he was taken to Golden Gate Park—he was not unreasonably quarrelsome, but preserved an attitude of armed neutrality. ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... betokened that he considered his services indispensable. With his bare head and feet he ran up and down the timbers as nimbly as a squirrel. When a beam was being lifted, he cried, "Pry under!" as lustily as any one, put his shoulder to the crowbar, and puffed as if nine-tenths of the weight fell upon him. Valentine liked to see his little boy employed. He would tell him to wind the twine on the reel, to carry the tools where they were wanted, or to rake the chips into a heap. Ivo obeyed all these directions with the zeal and devotion of a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... any depth that is convenient—ten to twenty feet—and take it out in great square blocks. This cutting is done with a chisel that has a handle twelve or fifteen feet long, and is used as one uses a crowbar when he is drilling a hole, or a dasher when he is churning. Thus soft is this stone. Then with a common handsaw they saw the great blocks into handsome, huge bricks that are two feet long, a foot wide, and about six inches thick. These stand loosely piled during a month to harden; then the work ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... when all was still, we heard soft steps back of the jail, and soon two dark forms stole round in front. They laid down something that gave forth a metallic clink, like a crowbar. We heard whisperings and ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... but I fancy nothing short of a crowbar would make Dick wince. His soul seems to have been fired before we ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... see the results. Take my own case—as a Magistrate I have enlisted rowers; I want money to pay 'em, and lo! the women clap to the door in my face.[424] But why do we stand here with arms crossed? Bring me a crowbar; I'll chastise their insolence!—Ho! there, my fine fellow! (addressing one of his attendant officers) what are you gaping at the crows about? looking for a tavern, I suppose, eh? Come, crowbars here, and force open the gates. I will put a ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... prostrate log. It had been cut three feet from the ground, over three-fourths of the way through, and had fallen toward the east, the body of the log still resting on the stump. The underbrush was almost impenetrable, but Duncan plunged in and with a crowbar began tapping along the trunk to decide how far it was hollow, so that they would know where to cut. As they waited his decision, there came from the mouth of it—on wings—a large black bird that ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... cannot fathom. One of the officers of the church told me that at one time he and another kept watch in the church during the night, one of the chapels having shortly before been broken open and a sacrilege committed. At the dead of night, finding the time hang heavy on their hands, they took a crowbar and removed the slab and looked down into the abyss below; it was dark as the grave; whereupon they affixed a weight to the end of a long rope and lowered it down. At a very great depth it seemed to strike against something dull and solid like lead: they ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... he comes in contact with professional gamblers, plunges into the most pernicious and abominable of vices—gambles, cheats, swindles, and finally, as a grand tableau to his utter damnation here and hereafter, opens a store or a bank with a crowbar—or commits murder. ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... picked up. The smaller boys and girls made little heaps of the small stones, while the larger rocks, requiring strength to move, were left to the older boys and girls. To some rocks the boys were obliged to take the pickaxe and crowbar. These were rolled, dragged and carted to the gutter at the bottom ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... ballenero whaler. bambolear vr. to totter. banco bank. banda band. bandera banner. bandido highwayman. bando faction, party, proclamation. bandolero bandit, highwayman. baqueta ramrod. baratura cheapness. barba chin, beard. barbaro barbarous. barco boat. barra crowbar. barranco ravine; barranquillo (dim.). barreno hole made with a borer or pick. barriga abdomen, belly; barrigon (aug.) barrilla alkali. barro clay, mud. barrunto conjecture. base f. base. Basilio Basil. bastante enough. bastar to suffice. batalla battle. batallon ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... discovered by a man who threw a stone at his loaded donkey, and thinking that it was very heavy, he picked it up, and found it full of pure silver: the vein occurred at no great distance, standing up like a wedge of metal. The miners, also, taking a crowbar with them, often wander on Sundays over the mountains. In this south part of Chile, the men who drive cattle into the Cordillera, and who frequent every ravine where there is a little pasture, are the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... best books for this place. . . . They are natives of this soil; literally so; and if planted would grow as surely as a crowbar in Kentucky sprouts tenpenny nails. 'Probatum est.' Last autumn L——dropped a poem of Shelley's down there in the wood,* amongst the thick, damp, rotting leaves, and this spring some one found a delicate exotic-looking plant, growing wild on the very spot, with ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... good exposure of the rock beneath the turf and began to quarry it. In the earnestness of the work one of the men forgot that he was standing on the verge of a precipice, and through a slip of his crowbar he lost his balance and went reeling into the gulf. His horrified companion crept to the edge, expecting to see his mangled corpse tossing in the whirlpool, but, to his amazement, the unfortunate was crawling up the face of a huge table of stone that had fallen from the opposite wall ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... he runs a crowbar through the center of one of the spools, puts a man on either side to push, and rolls it along as easy ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... quarrying of the rock had commenced, my work had been overseeing the native help, of which we had some fifteen cutting and hauling. In numerous places within a mile of headquarters, a soft porous rock cropped out. By using a crowbar with a tempered chisel point, the Mexicans easily channeled the rock into blocks, eighteen by thirty inches, splitting each stone a foot in thickness, so that when hauled to the place of use, each piece was ready to lay up in the wall. The ranch ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... drew from beneath his long overcoat a strong iron crowbar and a small vial of brandy, and deposited ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... confused rush to the upper deck, and everybody flung something over the ship's side—a life-belt, a chicken-coop, a coil of rope, a spar, an old sail, a pocket handkerchief, an iron crowbar—any movable article which it was thought might be useful to a drowning man who had followed the vessel during the hour that had elapsed since the initial alarm at the mast-head. In a few moments the ship was pretty nearly dismantled of everything that could be easily renounced, and ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... Going to each of the slaves, the latter signed them to descend. The negro swung himself down like a monkey, and received the baggage, which, besides the bundles already mentioned, consisted of some tools, notably a pick, a shovel, and a stout crowbar. An empty water-skin was also sent down, followed by a basket suggestive of food. Then the passenger, with a foot over the side of the vessel, gave ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... he knew nothing of the effects of guano, except through the somewhat confused accounts of Bob. Then the plain of the crater offered nothing beside a coarse and shelly ashes. These ashes were deep enough for any agricultural purpose, it is true, for Mark could work a crowbar down into them its entire length; but they appeared to him to be totally wanting in the fertilizing principle. Nor could he account for the absence of everything like vegetation, on or about the reef, if the elements of plants of any sort were to be found in the substances ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... is low and sloping, without any tongues under water. To such an one the Intrepid and Pioneer made fast, although the boat's crew that first reached it, in making a hole, were wetted by a projecting mass detaching itself with the first blow of the seaman's crowbar. A gale sprang up almost immediately, and during the night the Assistance blew adrift. Next day it abated, and the ice ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... of all shape, sir," said he. "The blacksmith pried out the lid wid a crowbar. The books are singed and soaked and ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... was tamping a charge of blasting-powder with a crowbar, when the charge went off prematurely and the bar was driven through the unfortunate man's body, so that part of it protruded on either side: A local physician was summoned, and after some study he pronounced as follows: ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... scow, dashed nose end up the shelving beach, and the next moment Ginnell and his linth of lead pipe was amongst the Chinamen, whilst Blood, following him, was firing his revolver over their heads. Harman, with a crowbar carried at the level, was aiming straight at the belly of the biggest of the foe, when they parted right and left, dropping everything, beaten before they were touched, and making for the water ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... climax in our dainty dinner this evening. Here was another means of acting upon the environment. Here was the beginning of the working of endless physical and chemical changes through the application of heat, just as the first use of the club or the crowbar was the beginning of an enormous ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... the gas and mustered all the 'arms' in the house. They consisted of an old sword and a horse pistol, the latter of which we loaded with ball. The front door was a very wide one, and here I planted one of the porters with a large kitchen poker. In one of the windows I placed a strong man with a crowbar, and in the other an active fellow with the sword. Presently we heard our upper windows smashing, and simultaneously, an attack was made upon our front door and windows by men armed with railings they had taken from Nelson's monument. These ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... were then made with a round crowbar under the stump singled out for execution. This hole should be as nearly horizontal as possible and directly under the stump so that all the explosive force may be expended on the wood and not on the earth between the dynamite and the stump. The earth acts ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... desperate enterprise could only be pushed to a successful issue by desperate tactics, and every available battalion was hurried forward to the assault. Before the San Cosme Gate the pioneers were ordered up, and within the suburb pick and crowbar forced a passage from house to house. The guns, moving slowly forward, battered the crumbling masonry at closest range. The Mexicans were driven back from breastwork to breastwork; and a mountain howitzer, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... of this force-generation, in the case of the will-power, we know nothing; but the moment the power is started on its way towards the point of force-expenditure, whether it traverses the nerves and tissues of the brain, or the right arm or the left, or a crowbar or pickaxe, it is in no sense distinguishable from the force that traverses a rope and pulley. Nor is there any evidence that it undergoes molecular changes, or becomes modified or conditioned by any nearly or remotely related force, as it darts along the nerves, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... sacrifice one of my two lives for the good of the other—yea, if it were necessary, to sacrifice both, for such an existence as I was leading could not last.... Father Serapion procured a mattock, a crowbar, and a lantern, and at midnight we set out for the cemetery, whose plan and arrangements he knew well. After directing the rays of the dark lantern on the inscriptions of several graves, we came at last to a stone half buried under tall grass, and covered ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the Troll—for it was a Troll as clear as day—asked if the old dame would stay and keep house for him a few days; and as the day went on he took a great iron crowbar, and asked the lad if he had a mind to go with him up the hill and quarry a few corner-stones. With all his heart, he said, and went with him; and so, after they had split a few stones, the Troll wanted him to go down below and look after cracks ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... drilled a hole about four feet deep and put in an awful blast of powder, and was standing over it ramming it down with an iron crowbar about nine foot long, when the cussed thing struck a spark and fired the powder, and scat! away John Godfrey whizzed like a skyrocket, him and his crowbar! Well, sir, he kept on going up in the air higher and higher, till he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... scintillating, we loudly applauded, and he went on: "Tell me, my dearest Agamemnon, do you remember the twelve labors of Hercules or the story of Ulysses, how the Cyclops threw his thumb out of joint with a pig-headed crowbar? When I was a boy, I used to read those stories in Homer. And then, there's the Sibyl: with my own eyes I saw her, at Cumae, hanging up in a jar; and whenever the boys would say to her 'Sibyl, Sibyl, what would you?' she would answer, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... in the belfry," it called; "the door is jammed. For God's sake! someone bring a crowbar, and ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... unpleasantly suggestive equipment of an American railway carriage is the axe and crowbar suspended on the wall for use in an accident. This makes one reflect that there are only two doors in an American car containing sixty people, whereas the same number of passengers in Europe would have six, eight, or even ten. This is extremely inconvenient in crowded trains (e.g., in the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... get a notion in that coco of yours; and it'd take a crowbar to work it loose," he observed, at which the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... shipyards. It was a manly form of labor, requiring a considerable outlay of apparatus, and developing finely the whole muscular organization. The implement employed, beside the ordinary tools, such as wedges, beetles, the broad-axe, chains, and crowbar, was a strong steel cutting-plate, of great breadth, with large teeth, highly polished and thoroughly wrought, some eight or ten feet in length, with a double handle, crossing the plate at each end at a right angle. It was worked by two men, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... disturbance, I admit," he would say, "and things are different—different in many ways. There was a time when a boy could weed, but now a man must go out with axe and crowbar—in some places down by the thickets at least. And it's a little strange still to us old-fashioned people for all this valley, even what used to be the river bed before they irrigated, to be under wheat—as it is this year—twenty-five ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... had sufficient clothing for a considerable body of troops if necessary, while the magazines could produce anything from a needle to a crowbar, or from a handkerchief to a boat's sail. It will be seen hereafter that these careful arrangements assured the success of the expedition, as the troops, when left without pay, could procure all they required from the apparently inexhaustible stores ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... station, visited its owner, with a huge portfolio under his arm, and, in the character of a painter, requested permission to take a particular sketch from a particular window. The Ensign followed with the artist's materials (consisting simply of a screwdriver and a crowbar); and it is hardly necessary to say that, when admission was granted to them, they opened the well-known door, and to their inexpressible satisfaction discovered, not their own peculiar savings exactly, for these had been appropriated instantly, on hearing of their ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... interest as the sheriff tried to shove a crowbar under it. He smiled to himself when it was removed with half a foot ...
— The Leech • Phillips Barbee
... off and securing the cover from falling into the boiler, the stoker gave the cover a tap with the end of the spanner to loosen the joint, but the cover showed no signs of slackening, and the end of a crowbar was requisitioned but without result; and in this case, as in a former one, my opinion was solicited as well as help. I used the crowbar end harder every blow; when at last the cover seemed to spring downwards and ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... divine Inheritance, or hidden mine, Or luck at play, or any favour. Nay, more, if any storm whatever Brew'd trouble here or there, The man was sure to have his share, And suffer in his purse, Although the god fared none the worse. At last, by sheer impatience bold, The man a crowbar seizes, His idol breaks in pieces, And finds it richly stuff'd with gold. 'How's this? Have I devoutly treated,' Says he, 'your godship, to be cheated? Now leave my house, and go your way, And search for altars where you may. You're like those natures, dull and gross, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... axe leaps! The solid forest gives fluid utterances, They tumble forth, they rise and form, Hut, tent, landing, survey, Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, lamb, lath, panel, gable, Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library, Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch, Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, wedge, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... my eye down to the crack, but could not see it. There was but one thing to be done,—the floor-boards must come up. I got a hatchet, but could do nothing. I called father; he brought a crowbar and pried up the board, then crawled under it and found the screw. I took good care not to ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... along, could see his father from the road. Hoek Matts was out in the grove prying up stones with his crowbar, and piling them on to a stone hedge. He never once looked up from his work, but went right on digging and lugging stones, some of which were so big that Gabriel thought they were enough to break his ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... work. The hawk, with his eyes fixed intently on his prey, did not, I fancy, see the snake lying motionless in the grass; or, if he did see him, he did not think he was a snake, but something else,—my crowbar, perhaps. After a little while, the hawk pounced down, and was just about to give the minar a blow and a grip, when the snake suddenly lifted his head, raised his hood, and hissed. The hawk gave a shriek, fluttered, flapped his wings with all his might, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... men, sometimes two or three gangs working together at the same task. Shovel gangs, track gangs, surfacing gangs, dynamite gangs, gangs doing everything imaginable with shovel and pick and crowbar, gangs down on the floor of the canal, gangs far up the steep walls of cut rock, gangs stretching away in either direction till those far off look like upright bands of the leaf-cutting ants of Panamanian jungles; gangs nearly all, whatever ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... foot and a half square and a little more than a foot in depth; during the rest of the day he had been busy in his rooms until he left the college about four o'clock. Not till then was the watchful janitor able to resume his labours. Armed with a crowbar, he worked vigorously until he succeeded in penetrating the wall sufficiently to admit a light into the vault of the lavatory. The first objects which the light revealed to his eyes, were the pelvis of a man and two ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... in reality but modifications and combinations of one or more of four simple machines devised long ago by our remote ancestors. These simple devices are known to-day, as (1) the lever, represented by a crowbar, a pitchfork; (2) the inclined plane, represented by the plank upon which barrels are rolled into a wagon; (3) the pulley, represented by almost any contrivance for the raising of furniture to upper stories; (4) the wheel and axle, represented by cogwheels ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... the churn. The milk was thrown away, and the farmer, John Griffiths, divining that the milk had been witched by the woman who had been begging at their house, went to consult a conjuror, who lived near Pwllheli. This man told him that he was to put a red hot crowbar into the milk the next time they churned. This was done, and the milk was successfully churned. For several weeks the crowbar served as an antidote, but at last it failed, and again the milk could not be churned, and the unpleasant smell made it again ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... Jones did—dug through the gravel floor and tunneled out, rising from the grave, so to speak, to the general uproar and hullabaloo of the entire settlement. Then—no one stopping him—he armed himself with an old Springfield rifle and an ax and a crowbar, and the cry went up he was going to murder the pastor, with the children running along in front and ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... a crowbar, traced in the slush the huge outlines of the buried beast, then, measuring with practiced eye the irregular zone of cleavage, she marked out a vast oval, dug holes along it with her bar, dropped into each hole a stick of dynamite, got out the batteries and wires, ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... with skill into the groups, to make them split and separate like firewood. He made use sometimes of the hilt of his sword as an additional help: introducing it between ribs that were too rebellious, making it take the part of a lever or crowbar, to separate husband from wife, uncle from nephew, and brother from brother. And all this was done so naturally, and with such gracious smiles, that people must have had ribs of bronze not to cry thank you when the wrist made its play, or hearts of diamond not to be enchanted ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... like myself, has far too great a mastery of the patois to handle delicate situations with success. For instance, when the fanner approaches me with tidings that my troopers have burnt two ploughshares and a crowbar and my troop horses have masticated a brick wall I engage him in palaver, with the result that we eventually part, I under the impression that the incident is closed, and he under the impression ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... differently now for so many generations that not one in ten thousand really recognizes what the laws of his being are, except in ways so gross that it seems as if we had sunken to the necessity of being guided by a crowbar, instead of steadily following the delicate instinct which is ours by right, and so voluntarily accepting the guidance of the Power who made us, which is the only ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... a look at you, young man,' said Albert's uncle, and he sat down on the edge of the bed. It is a rather shaky bed, the bar that keeps it steady underneath got broken when we were playing burglars last winter. It was our crowbar. He began to feel Noel's pulse, and ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... the bunk house with some thirty others of his shift. At half-past five in the evening the cook at the boarding-house sounded a prolonged alarm upon a crowbar bent in the form of a triangle, that hung upon the porch of the boarding-house. McTeague rose and dressed, and with his shift had supper. Their lunch-pails were distributed to them. Then he made his way to the tunnel mouth, climbed ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris |
